New Tourism Promotion Chief launches new business model

Sri Lanka Tourism Promotions Bureau Chairman Rohantha Athukorala stated at the inauguration of the Sri Lankan Pavilion on day one of the premier travel and tourism exhibition IBT in Berlin, that we must not just pay lip service to the private-public partnership ethos in the tourism industry but really work on a day to day basis.
On the advice of the Minister of Tourism and Sports Navin Dissnayake , Sri Lanka Tourism is launching a new business model where, apart from the short and medium term tourism strategy that has been agreed upon by the Ministry and the Board of Directors, a monthly partnership model will also play as a policy.

The monthly meeting will be initially at the tourism industry level where in each focus market – India, UK, China, Germany, France and Italy – the top private-public sector stakeholders will analyse the visitor arrivals of the previous month and the bookings for the next three months. Athukorala stated that the agreement on the promotional support with the tweaking will be discussed and agreed upon for activation adding that it will give a great flexibility to understand the changes in the marketplace and what responses we need to have from Sri Lanka.
Athukorala headed the same mechanism as the first Executive Director of the National Council for Economic Development (NCED) and he said that this best practice will now be modelled to the tourism industry for greater engagement and institutionalisation of the working arrangement he said.
“At the second level we will have a national meeting between the pivotal brand Sri Lanka development model between Sri Lanka tourism, the Tea Board promotional arm and Sri Lankan Airlines together with the Sri Lanka Export Development Board,” he said.
Athukorala also stated that synergies can be worked out for stronger brand promotions at a country level. This will be a high level meeting where the overall promotional budget will exceed Rs.10-15 billion.
“Once the structure is in play we will link to the national policy landing unit of the country just like the global best practices in Singapore and Malaysia,” he added.