Senior hotelier and former Vice Principal of the Ceylon Hotel School Anil Perera attributed the drop in tourist arrivals in November partly due to blocking of a large number of rooms during the CHOGM for delegates .

Perera said , lack of a proper marketing strategy by Sri Lanka Tourism Promotions Bureau (SLTPB) and the campaigns being handled by inexperienced and inefficient persons in the SLTPB had also resulted in the debacle and the results of the ad-hoc campaigns conducted by them would be reflected in the months to come.

“Sri Lanka deserves a better deal with security and safety in the country after crushing of the LTTE. Why has the country has failed to achieve a much higher percentage of tourist arrivals and the answer is that our marketing has been very poor and they not been conducted without any feasibility study,” he said.

Another reason for the drop in arrivals is overpricing of the product, he said.

“Our competitors in the region such as Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore etc provide better rooms with for a lesser price with much higher service standards and naturally the tourists are attracted to those countries,” the senior hotelier and lecturer explained.

“We have just started to market our product after a prolonged civil strife and today the world is catering to a new generation of tourists and our so called tourism experts should move with the trend of time and launch promotions where it is most needed,” he said.

Politicisation of the SLTPB and smug complacency of those at the top engaged in promotions had resulted in the institution failing to achieve the desired results, Perera pointed out.

“We need to take an example from the Maldives where a large number of Chinese and Russian holidaymakers visit the archipelago. Successive Maldivian Tourism Ministers have invited Lanka to launch joint promotions particularly in China as Sri Lanka has more to offer than the pristine beaches, but we have not responded to their call.” he said.

It was hilarious that the SLTpB Chief Rumy Jaufer had taken into account the Chinese working here as tourists and claimed that the number of Chinese tourist arrivals to the country had increased, he added.

There was a grave counting error in that every person arriving in the country be it a Sri Lankan returning home or a foreigner visiting Sri Lanka were accounted as tourists, Sri Lanka Tourism should find a better mechanism to ascertain the number of tourists visiting the country, instead of SLTPB thriving on highly exaggerated figures, Perera said.

The SLTPB claims that there is an increase of 59% in Chinese visitors to Sri Lanka, but certainly they are not all tourists as we don’t see very many Chinese tourists in any given hotel or on sites visited by the tourists, he said

The stakeholders in tourism such as SriLankan Airlines, Sri Lanka Tea Board, hotels etc also joined hands with SLTPB in promoting the country as a destination, but those agencies have failed in their objective as they did not possess proper marketing oriented personnel to promote the product, the former CHS Vice Principal explained.

“What is needed is a concerted effort by the stakeholders and it would yield better results,” Perera said.

With the slow down in tourist arrival growth in November the country has failed to achieve the expected 1.2 million target of tourist arrivals and the experts in the industry said that if the country was to reach the mark by the end of the year it should attract 200,000 visitors in December.

But according to the industry there was a semblance of a chance that the country would see little over 100,000 visitors in the last month but many others were doubtful of reaching even that figure .

Perera said that the hospitality industry faced a dearth of human resources as droves of hoteliers had left the country in search of greener pastures during the civil strife while some found employment in West Asia

Hence there wass a dire need to have professional hotel schools with qualified and experienced staff and the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority had a big task in its hands to monitor those schools and punish those operating bogus schools, he said.

The prices of hotel rooms should be reduced until the country reaches a certain level in tourist arrivals and then gradually increase the prices.

The promotions should be handled those with marketing experience and not political appointees with no experience or knowledge and refrain from giving out bogus figures , he said.

Source: http://www.island.lk