Hotels in Sri Lanka spruce up for next European winter

WITH higher arrivals expected for the next European winter season, hotels in Sri Lanka are sprucing up their room supply, with close to 1,500 rooms under refurbishment during the May to October off-season, industry officials said.

The industry generally relies on the European winter season to fill up its hotels, although India has recently become the number one tourism-generating market. The UK and Germany are the second and third largest.

In addition to the official room stock, there are also 7,000 rooms from the informal sector, said Anura Lokuhetty, president of the Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka and chairman of the Asian Council on Tourism.

State-owned Sri Lanka Tourism (SLT) chairman, Nalaka Godahewa, said that based on this renovation programme that would see 10 per cent of room stock off the shelf, the SLT has set a modest target of 700,000 tourist arrivals this year over the 650,000 in 2010.

“However, we have found arrivals to be encouraging in the first quarter, and based on this interest, we feel we could reach 700,000 to 750,000 arrivals this year,” he said.

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