Sri Lanka as safe as any other country say the French

By Samantha Whybrow
Seizing opportunity when it comes, officials from the tourism industry, have travelled to both France and the Netherlands to promote special travel deals to encourage tourists in these countries to visit Sri Lanka following a relaxation in their governments’ travel advisories in the past two weeks.
Early last week Tourism Minister, Milinda Moragoda, along with the Chairman and a Sri Lankan Tourism delegation met with French officials and industry representatives, offering ‘half price for your better half’ promotional packages to French tourists. The package will see one person pay full fare with the second person travelling at half price.
This deal will apply to airfares, hotel accommodation at any hotel in the country, and admission into tourist attractions. It will be on offer from the end of November to the end of January 2008, which is low season in Sri Lanka.
“We hope to generate up to 7,400 French tourists during this period,” said George Michael, Secretary at the Ministry of Tourism, noting the total number of tourists from France in 2006 was 25,000.
The French travel advisory was relaxed approximately two weeks ago, following a recent independent security audit of Sri Lanka by a private French firm, Securite sans Frontiers (SSF).
In a show of openness and transparency, SSF was encouraged to investigate security concerns at tourist attractions and areas such as the airport, hotels, and tourism sites. Their findings revealed Sri Lanka to be as safe as any other country that French tourists visit.
Meanwhile, the Netherlands advisory was only relaxed as the delegation was en route to France. Grasping the bull by its horns, the decision was swiftly made to extend the promotional visit to the Netherlands as well, making more efficient and productive use of time.
In 2006 19,360 tourists visited Sri Lanka from the Netherlands. This year, however, has seen tourist numbers plummet from all points of origin.
“We hope that with the liberation of the East people are now seeing a reduction in the terrorist threat,” said Michael who was optimistic that tourist numbers would now be on the rise again.
Acknowledging the importance of the latest relaxations in travel advisories in these two countries, Michael added, “we hope that other countries will also follow suit.”

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Lanka to be showcased at marine ecotourism conference

By Santhush Fernando
Sri Lanka’s pioneer national ecotourism organization- Sri Lanka Ecotourism Foundation (SLEF) is to showcase Sri Lanka at the forthcoming APECO 5-2007 Ecotourism Conference in Malaysia.
The conference which is to be held from 27-28th October, 2007, at the Sutra Beach Resort, Merang, Trengganu, Malaysia, will focus on Marine Ecotourism, one of the most important fields in Ecotourism for Island Nations.
The Marine Ecotourism Conference – 2007, has jointly been organized by the Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (MATTA) in collaboration with the Malaysian Government and the State Government of Trengganu, Malaysia.
Theme of the Ecotourism Conference is Marine Ecotourism: Best Sustainable Practices and Success Stories. The Conference will address these challenging issues and learn how to manage marine ecotourism through sustainable practices particularly in the Asia Pacific region.
This Conference calls upon Governments, industry leaders, academia and NGOs in their field of expertise to meet, discuss, network and most importantly, “walk the talk” in policies, plans, strategies and solutions to deliver a common consensus for sustainable tourism in our seas and rivers.
The objective of the Conference is to create greater awareness among both the public and private sectors members of the ecotourism products and especially showcase new ecotourism products in the Asia Pacific region.
It will also provide a platform for public and private sector members of the Asia Pacific regions to meet every year to discuss common interests and to synergise its development and marketing efforts to promote Asia Pacific as a single ecotourism destination on a win-win basis.
President of SLEF, Palitha Gurusinghe speaking to The Nation Economist said that the Conference was very significant to Sri Lanka as it was an island nation.
“We have a lot to learn from as many of these countries have conservation programmes in which the local community plays a prominent role. Some countries like Fiji have gone beyond and are trying to promote the whole island as a marine nation.”
Mr. Gurusinghe said although Sri Lanka has a rich biodiversity in our coastal environment in which turtles, corals and mangroves are flagship species, there is lot of destruction of marine environment going on.

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A380 enters scheduled service on October 28: SIA

(AFP) - The world’s largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, will begin scheduled service on October 28 between Singapore and Sydney, Singapore Airlines said Wednesday.
The double-decker super jumbo will have 471 seats, including 399 in economy class, the carrier said.
It said the A380 will operate a daily return flight, replacing one of three Boeing 747-400 aircraft on the route.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) is to be the first commercial airline to fly the A380.
SIA said economy seats will be on both decks, with business class upstairs and the premium Suites seats on the main deck.
Scheduled service to Sydney begins three days after the first commercial flight on the Singapore-Sydney route. SIA offered seats on that flight for sale on the eBay online marketplace, with proceeds going to charity.
SIA has committed to buy 19 A380s despite a series of delays that pushed back delivery from early last year.

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Emirates’ longest range aircraft touches down

Emirates recently welcomed the first of its 10 Boeing 777-200LRs on order, bringing the fast-expanding airline’s fleet count to 108. This new aircraft also represents the 50th Boeing 777 to have joined the fleet of the multi award-winning airline.
The technically-advanced Boeing 777-200LR will make its debut for Emirates on the airline’s non-stop Dubai to Sao Paulo route which will be launched on 1st October 2007, representing the first non-stop air link between the Middle East and South America. The same aircraft type will also be used on the Dubai – Houston service which begins on 3rd December.
Passengers will enjoy unrivalled comfort and amenities onboard Emirates’ Boeing 777-200LR which is equipped with eight luxurious private suites in First Class, 42 of its latest lie-flat seats in Business, and generous space for 216 passengers in Economy.
The aircraft will also feature ice Digital Widescreen - Emirates’ next generation inflight entertainment system which offers over 1,000 channels of movies, TV and game entertainment on demand - more than any other airline offers, by far. In addition to unique functions that enable greater personalisation of the inflight entertainment experience, ice Digital Widescreen also provides amazing clarity of images and sound quality, delivered on the airline world’s largest widescreen personal televisions - 23” in First Class, 17” in Business, and 10.6” in Economy.
Emirates currently operates 108 wide-bodied aircraft, including 11 freighters, to 93 cities in 59 countries. This year it has launched services to Venice and Newcastle, and will soon add Toronto, Sao Paulo, Ahmedabad and Houston to its global network.

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Travel industry makes a slow recovery

But peace is a must for its full revival

By Quintus Perera
Though various views are expressed with regard to the present status of the tourist industry in Sri Lanka, the ground realities are quite different from those views. Those in the industry never lets it down, while critics assert that the industry is doomed.
The real situation is that the industry has been alarmed at the continuing war and the Southern sector that has major concentration of tourist hotels are still trying to recover from the major shock of 2004 Tsunami coupled with war drums heard. Further, the present Tsunami alerts too are renewing the ghostly horrors that still linger in the travel industry in Sri Lanka.
The travel industry in Sri Lanka has invested enormous amounts, but still failed to muster adequate returns on these vast investments. Further the country is at a great loss that these investments are locked and would not be able to use for alternate purposes. Therefore whether one likes or not, the future of travel industry lies with attaining peace in the country as it is the most important pre-requisite.
In actual fact that almost the entire world is facing violent situations, mostly fighting with insurgents and while Sri Lanka too has been in that situation for a long time some tourists are used to such situations. When major violent activities subside, some of them would trickle down here.
That is what is exactly happening in the Southern tourist Sector – a cautious and slow upward trend is experienced. There are sporadic groups of foreign tourists in these hotels and the travel industry people are eagerly watching the gradual increase in the traveller climaxing towards the Winter season.
On the other hand travel industry here is reaping the results of the stable corporate sector as mostly the corporate sector in their welfare and other corporate NICE activities select these hotels and this to some extent compensates the heavy losses they would incur due to the depleted foreign tourist inflow.
In one of the four star hotels in the Bentota-Beruwala sector the weekend was full-up and one of the late corporate packages was 250 strong for a two day conference for their staff and there would be several such packages per week. In addition there are also families relaxing and spending the weekend holiday, in these hotels.

Thus it is a consoling situation in the travel industry, where local tourists also are making use of star class and other hotels and destinations, increasingly which could offset the impact caused by the low foreign tourist inflow.

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Sri Lankan MICE visit India

Prema Cooray, Chairman of the Sri Lanka Convention Bureau (SLCB), lead a delegation that traveled to India last week to host meetings with Indian corporates, hoping to entice them to Sri Lanka.

Earlier this year, Cooray noted the size of the Indian MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions, exhibitions) market is “huge and untapped”.

The SLCB, in conjunction with SriLankan Airlines, Taj Hotels, and the MICE industry of Sri Lanka, is offering cheap deals to lure Indian corporates away from more well-established MICE destinations such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.
India currently has around 9 million outbound tourists each year, of which around 800,000 are MICE travellers according to the SLCB. Sri Lanka aims to capture around 10%, or 80,000, of these MICE within the next two years, a significant increase on the 18,000 who travelled to the island last year.

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Galadari Hotel culinary art competition winners for 2007

A large number of Galadari Hotel staff members received accolades at the recently concluded Culinary Arts Competition 2007 at the BMICH with about 95% of the participants winning medals for their achievements.
Seen in the picture the participants with Executives of the Hotel – Pastry Chef Nimal Fernando, Sous Chef Mr.Sanath Dais, Executive Sous Chef Imroze Salih, Executive Chef Lloyd Opatha, Financial Controller Upali Perera, Food & Beverage Director Ananda Warakawa, Assistant Food & Beverage Director Ramlee Adjumain, Human Resource Manager Ms Niloosha Dodanwela and Ms Nirukshi Rupasinghe Public Relations Manager
1st Row Standing- P.D.N.Fernando, U.Priyadarshana, K.M.S.Nishantha, S.P.Pinnaduwa, T.Dain, K.W.P.Kumarana, W.K.P.Kumarana, Snr.Chef De Partie Mr.Kapila Fonseka,M.Ulapane, A.B.C.Prasad, A.R.S.Fernando, S.P.Gunathilake, W.A.Fernando,Snr Chef De Partie .Pradeep Kumara.
2nd Row Standing - T.D.Juriansz, S.A.J.L.Priyantha, S.M.S. Nishantha, D.N. Abeywickreme, M.A.M.Arshad, P.M.S.C.Bandara, M.R.Kahawevitharana, K.A.K.Lokuliyana, A.Roshan, R.A.D.B.Ranapana,Mr.W.D.Saman Kumara