Category: Tourism

Sept 02, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Softlogic Holdings Plc said it had got the franchise to set up Burger King branded restaurants in Sri Lanka.BK AsiaPac will provide services and operational support for the chain in Sri Lanka. Corrected Soflogic Restaurants (Pvt) Ltd, a fully subsidiary will open three restaurants within a few months, […]

MADRID, August 26, 2013 (AFP) – International tourist numbers surged by 5.2 percent to nearly half a billion people worldwide in the first half of 2013, beating earlier expectations, the United Nation’s World Tourism Organisation said Monday. Some 494 million international tourists spent at least one night abroad in the first six months of the […]

Aug 27, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals rose 9.5 percent to 98,944 in July 2013 from a year earlier, helped by India, Germany and China, data from the state tourism promotion office said. In the seven months to July visitors were up 12.5 percent to 611,222. South Asian arrivals rose 24.6 percent to […]

Aug 22, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s LOLC Leisure, owners of Palm Garden Hotels is in talks with international hotel chains to manage their proposed 475 room hotel, which the firm says will be the largest resort in the country. Jayewardene said the old hotels were removed to make maximize land use and to “develop […]

SYDNEY, August 16, 2013 (AFP) – Australian tycoon James Packer said Friday he wants to expand his gaming empire into the lucrative Japanese market in the form of resort-casinos to tap the country’s love of gambling. The mogul, who already operates casinos in Melbourne, Perth and Macau and is planning complexes in Manila, Sydney and […]

Aug 08, 2013 (LBO) – A large casino resort by Australia’s Crown group will be built on the original location and they have only been informed to design two towers to maintain a view of a nearby lake, a minister said.Investment promotion minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene said the project, which borders Colombo’s Beira Lake should […]

Aug 02, 2013 (LBO) – Top Sri Lankan hotel operator, John Keells Hotels Plc, slipped into the red in the June 2013 quarter amid a tourism boom losing 102 million rupees, interim accounts showed.The firm reported losses of 7 cents per share for the quarter, compared to earnings of 03 cents on total profits of […]

Aug 02, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s John Keells Holdings said an 800 million US dollar casino resort project will raise foreign debt and the parent may also make a cash call to invest 240 million US dollars in equity.The project involves an 800 room up market hotel, a convention centre that can hold 2,500 […]

July 30, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s boatpeople face return to island or transfer to Papua New Guinea, an island off the Australian coast as 68 Lankans are shortly to be put through an enhanced screening processes, the country said. Almost 1300 Sri Lankans have been sent home since August 2012, 1100 of them involuntarily. […]

YANGON, July 29, 2013 (AFP) – Pre-dawn wake-up calls, days of silence and hunger may not be everyone’s idea of a holiday, but for tourists seeking spiritual sustenance Myanmar’s monasteries offer help on the path to Buddhist nirvana.The search for inner peace is unlikely to appeal to those who take a more hedonistic approach to […]

July 26, 2013 (LBO) – Profits at Sri Lanka’s Trans Asia Hotels, owners of Colombo’s 5-star Cinnamon Lakeside fell 23 percent to 121.5 million rupees in the June 2013 quarter from a year earlier, interim accounts showed.The firm, a unit of John Keells Holdings, reported earnings of 61 cents per share for the quarter. Revenues […]

July 25, 2013 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Co-operative Wholesale Establishment (CWE), an virtually defunct state agency is in talks with Indian and Malaysian parties to build hotels in two prime properties, a parliamentary report said.The state agency has a 6.5 acre site in D R Wijewardene Mawatha in Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo which is expected […]