Category: Tourism

SIGIRIYA, Sri Lanka, July 1, 2007 (AFP) – Britney Spears, Paul McCartney, Sting and Paul Simon have all travelled to Sri Lanka for a big-bucks taste of tropical luxury.“The rich will not want to come if Sri Lanka has an image of a cheap destination,” Jinasena said. But an escalating war with Tamil Tiger rebels […]

June 30, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Tourism is kicking off a new drew to promote high spending niche tourism to the country with the appointment of a new advisory council led by the private sector. At the moment approximately 300,000 people in Sri Lanka depend on the tourism industry the ministry officials […]

June 24, 2007 (LBO) – Aitken Spence, a large Sri Lanka based hotel chain with operations in the Maldives and India, is laying out a new menu based on local cuisine and herbal spices. The company’s ‘Heritance’ chain of hotels plans to introduce a range of authentic Sri Lankan dishes within the next two months, […]

June 22, 2007 (LBO) – Visitors to Sri Lanka plummeted 40 percent in May with Europe and East Asia showing steep falls, as an intensifying conflict, travel advisories and air raids on the capital scared away foreigners. Most listed hotel firms are reporting losses, but major operators who have operations in the Maldives have managed […]

June 15, 2007 (LBO) – Two of Sri Lanka’s leisure sector players have managed to cushion a downturn in tourism on the island, with profits from resorts they own in the Maldives. . John Keells Holdings, one of the biggest capitalised firms in the Colombo bourse, and Aitken Spence, have been expanding in to the […]

June 11, 2007 (LBO) – Earlier this year, a foreign television crew working for the Travel Channel in London arrived in the country to do a documentary on the tourism hotspots. Travel Channel’s first priority was to visit and film the Dutch Galle fort in the southern coastal region of Sri Lanka. Then their troubles […]

June 4, 2007 (AFP) – Advance bookings for England’s winter cricket tour of Sri Lanka has been rising steadily even as fighting between troops and Tamil Tiger rebels escalates, officials said on Monday.A tour organising official at Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) said at least 4,000 bookings by British cricket fans have been almost finalised and […]

June 02, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tourism industry aims to attract more women visitors under its efforts to revive faltering arrivals as an escalating internal conflict harms the island’s image, a top official said. The industry is working on several special holiday packages targeting niche markets like professional women and retired people in a […]

June 01, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lankan police have revived their tourist police branch to better protect tourists in the face of increasing complaints of harassment and a sharp downturn in arrivals. It will re-establish a network of tourist police stations in key resort areas, senior superintendent Maxi Proctor, director of the new unit, said […]

May 30, 2007 (LBO) – Britain is advising its citizens not to travel to the north and east of Sri Lanka, but they are free to visit other parts of the country, the UK High Commission (embassy) in Colombo said. Sri Lanka’s total tourist arrivals are down 19.9 percent so far this year. “Some recent […]

May 22, 2007 (AFP) – Cases of murder, abduction, disappearance and intimidation surface almost daily in Sri Lanka as the South Asian nation appears to be sliding into lawlessness and war.With a truce between the government and the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in tatters and peace talks long since abandoned, rights workers […]

May 21, 2007 (AFP) – The number of holidaymakers visiting Sri Lanka fell by nearly 20 percent in the first four months of this year as fighting between troops and Tamil rebels escalated, the tourism authority said Monday.Visitor numbers to Sri Lanka dropped to 167,674, down 19.9 percent over the corresponding period of last year. […]