Train from Nuwara Eliya to Kandy among the tea plantations in Sri Lanka
SRI Lanka is launching in November probably its first major destination campaign in seven years.
The campaign will spotlight the country as being one of the safest in the world in an effort to shed its image as a pariah.
Tourism minister John Amaratunga, speaking at a hospitality conference held in Colombo on Wednesday, said Sri Lanka Tourism will be driving the multi-channel global initiative.
“One barrier that we face is that some of our target markets (still do not know that) Sri Lanka is now one of the safest countries in the world. This is something that needs to be addressed and will be done through this campaign,” he said, without revealing further details.
Once an avoided destination due to a 30-year-long bloody civil conflict which ended in 2009, Sri Lanka has since recovered. It has set an arrivals target of 2.2 million in 2016 and 4 million by 2020.
There hasn’t been any serious tourism promotion since the war ended.
Arrivals are soaring with July being the best performing month ever on record with 209,351, up 19.1 per cent from the same month in 2015 and beating the record set last December of 206,114.
