Category: Tourism

May 11, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Expolanka Holdings Plc said Friday it had paid 915,000 dollars to buy a 50 percent stake and management control in Akquasun Holidays India Private Limited, a joint venture with Mumbai-based Akquasun Group. Akquasun Holidays India is a business-to-business agency that works with other travel agents, tour operators and […]

May 07, 2012 (LBO) – Profits of Taj Lanka Hotel Plc, a unit of India’s Taj Hotels and Resorts Ltd, plunged 87 percent to just 6.7 million rupees in the March 2012 quarter due to exchange losses from a dollar loan. Taj Lanka’s revenues rose 6 percent to 450 million rupees in the December quarter […]

May 06, 2012 (LBO) – Hotel Developers Ltd, a state-run property where Colombo’s Hilton is housed will go a 45 million US dollar refurbishment, as it gears up to meet competition from spruced up city hotels, a media report said. Hotel Developers was one of the firms that was expropriated by the state through a […]

May 05, 2012 (LBO) – Teoria Investment Company Limited, a Japan based company is investing two million US dollars in a beach resort built by Sri Lanka’s Asia Leisure, which is seeking partners for new hotels, officials said. “We need to raise seven-to-eight million dollars each (for each hotel), to start projects in Galle and […]

May 03, 2012 (LBO) – A new Indian Ocean cruise is due to open this winter, ferrying passengers to Sri Lanka’s main port of Colombo, targeting some 4,000 up market tourists from German speaking countries, officials said. Mooted by FTI Group, a German tour operator, the 206-cabin cruise liner carrying some 400 passengers, will sail […]

May 01, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka has completed preliminary work assessing the risks of most frequented tourist sites, as the island beefs up its leisure products to welcome more holidaymakers, officials said. The project was mooted, after an Australian tourist accidently died after walking-off the Hortain Plains in the central mountain regions last year, […]

May 01, 2012 (LBO) – Foreign visitors continue to tour Sri Lanka’s central regions, despite ongoing religious tensions where Buddhist monks have demanded a 60-year-old mosque be relocated, a tourism industry lobby said. Hakeem alleged that “extremist forces” were trying to stir trouble, to fan religious tensions across the island that is emerging after the […]

April 30, 2012 (LBO) – A 75 million US dollar transfer of state beachfront land to India’s ITC is to be wrapped up by May 10, setting the stage for a Sheraton branded hotel in Colombo, Treasury Secretary P B Jayasundera said. The land was earlier to be sold to China’s CATIC on a freehold […]

April 26, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Pegasus Hotels of Ceylon PLC said Thursday it has raised 110.9 million rupees via a rights issue. The Carsons Group managed hotel, issued 3.04 million shares to existing shareholders at a proportion of one share for every nine shares at 36.50 rupees each, Pegasus said in a stock […]

Apr 25, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is getting more cruise ship calls after the end of its 30-year war with the latest being the vessel MV L’Austral operated by the French cruise line Compagnie du Ponant, a statement said. The cruise vessel, owned by CMA CGM, the third largest container shipping line, made her […]

Apr 20, 2012 (LBO) – Tour operators in the Seychelles want to promote joint holiday packages for tourists with Sri Lanka and establish direct air links between the two Indian Ocean islands. Visiting foreign minister of Seychelles Jean Paul Adams said in Colombo they expect 350,000 tourists in the coming year. “Most tour operators in […]

Apr 17, 2012 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals rose 21.3 percent to 91,102 in March from a year earlier with arrival in the first three months up 21. 1 percent to 260,525, the state tourist promotion agency said. East Asian visitors were up 44. 3 percent to 10,148, with Malaysian arrivals up 47.3 percent […]