Sri Lanka Tourism and Tea Board in a Rs.1bn tie up
Sri Lanka Tourism promotions bureau(SLTPB) whose focus is to drive Sri Lanka as destination brand globally, has extended it's support to build ceylon tea in each of the 47 key travel and tourism fairs by offering the facility of featuring a " tea bar" in every stall. The tie up is worth almost 1 bn rupees given that Sri Lanka tourism invest this value this year in its global drive to rev up the visitor arrivals which registered only a 7% growth in the month of January 2015.
The marketing Director Tea Board Mrs Srikath with Chairman Sri Lanka Tourism Rohantha Athukorala with some key tea exporters who will be featured at top global fair at ITB- Berlin.
The Marketing Director for Sri Lanka Tea Board Ms Srikath said this is a big win for Ceylon Tea given that this will supplement the work we current do at the Tea Board. Chairman Athukorala said a transparent process will be followed where Sri Lanka tourism will write formally to the Tea Exporters Association(TEA) on the key global fairs that Sri Lanka Tourism is to take part such the one in China next week, followed with MITTE in Moscow the week after followed by NATAS in Singapore and the TEA can recommend the brands to be featured by the membership.
Six key Ceylon Tea exporters will be features in ITB - Berlin which the biggest travel and tourism fair globally which is a big win on this partnership said Rohantha Athukorala who him self is a member of the Sri Lanka Tea Board - marketing committee for the last 6 years. Sampling of the tea and brochure distribution will be done whilst dedicated ceylon tea promoters being there is part of the historic tea board and Sri Lanka tourism partnership.
Sri Lanka tea board registered an export revenue of $1.6 billion last year whilst Sri Lanka tourism earned $1.7 billion. However, Athukorala mentioned that if we take the total value chain of the Tourism industry the total value will exceed 6 billion dollars making it the number one foreign exchange earner to the country. Hence we must support not only tea but also other key export products like apparel, ceylon cinnamon and ceylon sapphires so that brand Sri Lanka in totality benefits. Currently brand Sri Lanka is worth 61billion dollars as per brand finance(UK). We must make brand Sri Lanka cross a 100 billion by end 2016 said Chairman Athukorala.
