The project to set up two online accommodation booking portals is driven by the South Asia Enterprise Development Facility (SEDF) an arm of the World Bank’s IFC.
Plans are to link up local small and medium owners and operators of accommodation facilities and boutique hotels through a single portal, for easy access by independent travellers.
The IFC has been piloting a new model for getting SME accommodation providers participating actively on the internet, and after a series of very successful trials in the Mekong region in Vietnam over the past two years, has decided on implementation in Sri Lanka, the IFC said in a public notice on Monday.
Interested Sri Lankan partners have been invited to submit expressions of interest to develop the online booking portals.
The internet based system for setting up and maintaining the sites belongs to Worldhotel-link.com Ltd, which runs similar portals for 23 countries.
The selected project partner will own and operate the acc