Sri Lanka is slowly picking up the pieces of tourism devastation as airport operations resume after a 10-month lockdown, with arrivals for January 2021 numbering just 1,682.
In January 2020, Sri Lanka welcomed 228,434 arrivals.
Arrivals climbed the following month, with 2,700 visitors between February 1 and 25, according to official data.
Madhubani Perera, director at Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, said tourism recovery is boosted by twice weekly scheduled flights from Kazakhstan and Ukraine to Sri Lanka’s second international airport in southern Hambantota.
Both services carry 200 passengers each every week.
In January 2021, Ukraine, Belarus, China, Russia and Germany were Sri Lanka’s top five international tourist source markets, with Ukraine accounting for 86.8 per cent of the total traffic largely due to an experimental month-long travel bubble involving 1,700 visitors prior to the airport’s reopening to foreign visitors.
Meanwhile, domestic tourism continues to keep hotels busy, especially during weekends.
“Our hotels are full on weekends, particularly during long weekends, with local guests. This is paying for our staff salaries and electricity bills,” said Hiran Cooray, chairman of Jetwing Symphony Hotels.
He hoped that foreign arrivals would pick up in summer (May/June), particularly from the UK as citizens would have been vaccinated by then. The UK was once Sri Lanka’s biggest source market.
He also suggested that Sri Lanka relax arrival guidelines to allow vaccinated tourists into the destination without PCR tests and other regulations.
While Sri Lanka does not enforce a mandatory quarantine on arrival, all visitors must get visas online with confirmed hotel bookings, pre-purchased PCR tests and a mandatory Covid-19 insurance cover providing US$50,000 worth of hospitalisation or medical bills for a month. All arrivals must present a valid PCR test taken 96 hours before arrival.
Locals are not allowed to mingle with tourists while there are 20 locations to visit by tourists travelling in a bubble.
A hotel manager from Kandy, a city famed for a sacred Buddhist temple and an annual street pageant featuring dozens of elephants that is popular with tourists, said this was the time for the industry to bring in fresh thinking and new tourist locations.
“This is a near-50 year-old product which hasn’t changed, where tourists are taken on the same routes to see the same places,” he remarked.
Passengers travelling on Emirates’ Economy Class can now purchase up to three empty adjoining seats on their flight – an initiative introduced to address customers’ feedback.
Customers will not be able to pre-book empty seats, as these are subject to availability. Empty seats will only be offered for purchase at the airport check-in counter prior to flight departure, and cost from AED 200 (US$55) to AED 600 per empty seat, plus applicable taxes depending on flight sector.
In addition, Emirates has rolled out a variety of seat products for Economy Class customers, such as extra legroom seats; twin seats on select aircraft; and preferred seats in the first section of the cabin and on the upper deck of a two-class Airbus 380.
These seats are offered for free or at a charge, depending on the customer’s Emirates Skywards membership tier, fare type, time to departure, and other special needs.
Further, to help customers flying on essential trips take home what they need most, the airline has introduced generous discounts of 35 to 60 per cent on excess baggage rates.
Emirates’ latest round of service enhancements join the airlines’ customer care initiatives that were introduced during the pandemic. They include flexible booking policies and multi-risk insurance coverage.