A New Slogan For Sri Lanka Tourism
Like this picture, there are many things wrong with Sri Lanka Tourism.
There have been mad shufflings at Sri Lanka Tourism lately, which I guess is OK, cause I’m not entirely sure what they do. Sri Lanka has numerous resources with invisible or actively incompetent administration (sports being the latter) and if the Sri Lanka Tourist Board were to vanish tomorrow I’m not sure too many people would notice. The biggest news they made in latter years was branding Sri Lanka ‘A Small Miracle’ and then backtracking at the last minute. Now the slogan is ‘Refreshingly Sri Lanka’ with eight random words as thematic hooks. Which is confusing. I think I got something better.
The Old Slogan: Small Miracle
Slightly jarring song aside, I thought the small miracle idea was OK. Playing off the Arthur C. Clarke quote that this island was a small universe, the ads showed the beauty of Sri Lanka and then would often end with the experience being folded up into a character’s backpack. This is one of the appeals of Sri Lanka, that there’s so much awesome stuff that you don’t have to travel days in between.
However, the word ‘small’ rubbed some people the wrong way and the campaign got scrapped at the last minute, at great expense.
Current: Refreshingly Sri Lanka, Wonder Of Asia
The current campaign uses much of the same images, but under a meaningless brand. Actually two meaningless brands. Or make that ten. In addition to the catch phrases above, material has also been thematically organized under the following categories: Pristine, Heritage, Thrills, Wild, Bliss, Scenic, Essence, and Festive. Eight is too many in the first place, but they’re internally incoherent. Pristine is an adjective and Heritage is a noun. They haven’t even used the same type of word, it’s just a word salad. Plus eight is too much to remember, and the traits aren’t even uniquely Sri Lanka. It’s a hodgepodge and a fail.
My Idea: Sri Lanka – Like India but better
Here’s something better. ‘Sri Lanka. Like India, but better.’ People already have an Indian experience branded in their heads, but they get there and it’s people peeing in the streets and days of travel. I’m not saying that India isn’t great, but it is a very large miracle and you will deal with arduous travel and public urination, guaranteed. Sri Lanka has much of the imagined oriental experience (and more), without the bad parts. People are nice, speak English almost anywhere, travel times are shorter, and there is no shortage of natural beauty and awesomeness.
Sri Lanka. Like India but better.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
Hope you saw this video, shot by a foreigners during their visit here.. Loved it!
http://vimeo.com/37594200
This link is WICKED! AWSOME! They have done something all the big budget advert boys could not put together in a million years. (Having said that they cannot organise a pissup in brewery)
Thank you Nazly.
Jacking up the prices of hotel rooms as the government has done is not going to help Sri Lanka’s'tourist industy. You can get cheaper deals going to Thailand/Indonesia/Vietnam. Besides that in these countries there is much more to see and do than there is in Sri Lanka and the roads, hotels, beaches, shopping and food are better too. That’s a whole load of better to compete against. India really should not be our benchmark to be honest.
agreed with Jujubes (that’s a sentence i never thought i’d write!!). We should not benchmark ourselves with India. i don’t think it sounds ‘nice’ in any angle. also, i don;t think india would be really happy if we go around the world saying we are better than them. :) I am still with the Miracle concept. And yes, Indi is right, our tourism strategy doesn’t make sense. at all!!!! its the same as the Sri Lankas airlines strategy. no focus no direction.
Thing is most tourists coming here are looking for a cross between India and the Maldives, with a bit of SE Asia thrown in. So you can’t avoid the Indian benchmark. Also, lots of our tourism comes from India itself, and Indians, like Americans, look for a little bit of “Yindiyar yeverywhere”.