Sri Lanka is open for business again

As peace and order returns to Sri Lanka after months of political and economic chaos, a large delegation of tourism professionals of Sri Lanka, led by Tourism Minister Harin Fernando, visited India on a multi-city roadshow. Fernando tells India Outbound that the main objective is to tell Indian partners that Sri Lanka is ready to welcome Indian tourists once more.

- Varsha Singh

Q What is the objective of your visit and this roadshow? 

What we have come to communicate is that Sri Lanka is back and we want India to know that Sri Lanka is a very special place for them to travel to. Sri Lanka has so much to offer, you will find everything in one place.

Therefore, we are very keen to make inroads in the Indian market. There is a huge sector of leisure travellers, entertainment, adventure, honeymoon and the MICE market. There are a lot of corporate functions that could be held here as well. So, we thought of bringing Sri Lanka into India. There is a lot of negative news about Sri Lanka, as you know we were going through a very bad period, but things are settling in. We were going through some financial issues if we have to come out of this problem, we will need to make sure that tourism works well because our economy is very much dependent on tourism, remittances and apparel export, so tourism is one of the top three.

Which markets are you looking at, besides India?