Sri Lanka’s post-war tourism offensive includes 99 year leases for resorts

Sri Lanka’s tourist development agency has offered islets, hundreds of acres of land bordering beaches, a wildlife reserve and a wetland on 99-year leases to build tourism related projects. This will be offered to foreign developers. Among them, eight islets in Kalpitiya off the western coast of Sri Lanka, 150 kilometres north of the capital Colombo, are being offered for development.

In related news, Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Economic Development said it has approved 129 projects involving the building of 9,364 hotel rooms this year. In the first seven months of 2012 Sri Lanka welcomed 543,205 tourists up by 16.7 percent from the same period of last year.

Meanwhile, HVS has come out with a new upbeat report on the tourism potential in the country, following past two years of improvements in infrastructure, tourist arrivals and tourism earnings, and hotel market performances. HVS believes that the
growth story will continue in a post-war Sri Lanka. The report below analyzes the Colombo hotel market and the Southwest Coast resort market to evaluate the impact of the growth in the economy and tourist arrivals on hotel performances in these regions

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