Articles tagged “sri lanka”

Sri Lanka’s biggest inbound market — India — is turning towards alternative destinations. The current Sri Lankan political turmoil threatens to cripple the tourism industry, which is worth more than $3.6 billion to the country and is the third largest foreign exchange earner.

In Skift's top travel stories this week, Sri Lanka is reinventing its tourism future, airlines and global distribution systems made peace, Google faced a bevy of lawsuits, an airline launched in the middle of the pandemic, and Hilton proved that mergers aren't the only way to grow.

A Sri Lanka reopening may be imminent. More importantly, the destination is looking beyond Covid-19 to reposition itself yet again, taking lessons from the Easter Sunday bombings crisis to find its place in the tourism universe.

It’s too early to tell if Sri Lanka will eventually become a global tourism success, but a new marketing campaign under the government's new tourism-friendly leadership is a start.

The arrival of a new tourism-focused government appears to fix the global marketing conundrum Sri Lanka has long faced. Will the tourism sector finally get its act together? Hopes are high that it will.

It’s likely to get worse before it gets better for the Asian tourism industry. But forward-thinking players will know to take advantage of the current downtime to meet the pent-up demand for travel once recovery comes — which may not be far off.

It's understandable that Sri Lanka wants arrivals to return to pre-Easter bombing levels soonest. The challenge is knowing what measures are needed, amid the sense of urgency that can cloud the mind.

Of the several measures to bring arrivals back to pre-Easter bombing levels, a tireless Sri Lanka is asking online travel agencies to slash commissions. It might be better to ask them instead to do a free or at-cost campaign to drive bookings to the country.

In the wake of a tragedy, destinations are hugely beholden to the public perception of how safe it is to travel there, regardless of the reality on the ground. But the United States — which has experienced more mass shootings than there are days in 2019 — is unfairly exempt from that struggle.

Most countries are still prejudiced against the Indian passport. That's a shame. Indian travelers are a legitimate, growing source for the global tourism industry. Thailand understands that; Australia not yet. Maybe it'll take a cricket match to change that.