PEAKLIFE

Sri Lankan tourism to take initiative to showcase Sri Lanka’s offering as a vibrant, beautiful and captivating destination for weddings

With an increase in the trend of wedding destination around the globe, Sri Lanka announces its new plan for promoting Sri Lanka as the next hot spot in India Market.

Speaking to PEAKLIFE, today at the India International Travel & Tourism (IITT), Mumbai, John A. E Amaratunga, Minister of Tourism Development and Christian Religious Affairs of Sri Lanka, elaborated the marketing initiatives of Sri Lanka as a complete holiday destination, including wedding and wellness.

Do you think you have arrived in wedding planning a little late?

Already there are a lot of wedding destination, there are number of people who have organised wedding, brands like Shangrila have already done this and now in Columbo also. Now we want to popularise the wedding concept and invite more brands to come to Sri Lanka as wedding planner and promote us and increase tourism.

As you have a very strong base in India with many connectivities as far as Tourism is concerned do you have any plans to have permanent office.

We have our Honorary Consulate in Mumbai, Delhi High commission and Chennai. We also have offices of our Airlines in most states and all of them work together to promote tourism here in India.  

How is Sri Lankan government taking initiative to plan for wedding planners and Tourist?

That is why we are attending an Indian conference with our officials, and we will lay down agenda to plan for wedding destination, or anniversary etc. and help out the planner and hotels.

Indians are high spenders across the globe, all the consulate and embassies are giving the best facilities, what are next keen initiative that will be taken to promote Sri Lankan tourism in India?

One is Online visa, we are trying to see whether visa-free-air, that can attract people certain times of the year. To work on Domestic Transportation & Domestic Airline Transportation to travel within Sri Lanka. Thirdly our chefs are capable of producing any Indian Cuisine, we would love to promote it.  Most important planning better security for the people who travel to Sri Lanka. In addition, the Sri Lankan Airport is also expanding opening new doors for tourism.

Within Indian we have two places Tamil Nadu & Kerala proclaiming to be the origin of Ayurveda, Sri Lanka holds certain similar facts, so do you intend running a wellness campaign about the same?

Wellness, specifically Ayurveda is something that is there long year before western medicine came into Sri Lanka, many people have joined up the hotels and Ayurveda in the same compounds and work cohesively. We are not worried about the origin, but if the treatment is right to the tourist. That is why we want all these practitioners to register with Ministry of Health and give a better facilities.

He also highlighted that “In addition, we have world-class hotels, major hotel chains are now expanding in Sri Lanka, providing good accommodation, there are trains facilities, wellness, adventure like surfing, Whale watching etc.”