We live here. Photo from island hopping in Jaffna.
I was looking thru some photos on the Sri Lanka Tourism Facebook page and it’s like, ye gods, I live here? Sri Lanka is a beautiful island and a great tourist destination. It’s affordable, friendly, and – for the first time – safe. I remember a friend of mine went down South without a phone and a bus along that line blew up. I worried till he got back to CMB. Not anymore. Now people can just go, all around the island.
Sri Lanka was recently tagged as an emerging tourist destination by some international tourism body (via LBO)
The World Travel Market 2011 Industry Report said the island was ‘re-emerging’ after the 30-year ethnic war and noted it for ‘beauty of destination’ and ‘investing in infrastructure’.
The report said Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico and Argentina are the other emerging counties behind the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
It was also named as one of the Best Trips 2012 by National Geographic. Sri Lanka was also listed as the number one place to go by the New York Times in 2010.
To anyone who’s been here, the appeal of Sri Lanka is quite self-evident, and needs no particular accreditation. I simply don’t know any other place in the world with such a concentration of awesome. You are never more than four hours from a beach, never more than 12 hours from anywhere, and you can experience everything from ancient ruins to snorkeling to amazing food and people, in a day. The one thing we lack is great shopping a la Kuala Lumpur or Singapore and high scale city stuff, but A) I can’t afford that stuff and B) there are plenty truer treasures. Colombo is developing an upscale end, ranging from boutique hotels to air taxis to hor air balloons, but even those are relatively affordable.
The Data
Personally, my best experiences have just been trekking around, eating street food, swimming, exploring and being amazed. Anyways, just to bore stuff up a bit, here’s a graph.
This graph is from a recent RAM Holdings report. This graph shows the annual growth of different services (not their absolute size). In that regard, tourism is bumping, and it puts money in peoples pockets all up and down the supply chain.
The tourism sub-sector, in particular, experienced a surge in activity, with tourist arrivals rising 34.3% y-o-y in the first 9 months of this year…
The latest estimates from the CBSL cite a 49% jump (or USD 521.7 million) in tourism receipts for the first 8 months of this year (RAM Economic Outlook)
Reuters has also just reported that 2011 is a record year for Sri Lankan tourism, after only 10 months.
Data from Reuters and 2010 and 2008 statistical reports
November and December are perhaps the biggest months, yet uncounted, but this year has already been better than the last, and the best ever.
Tourist arrivals in the first ten months of 2011 jumped 34.2 percent to 667,569 from a year earlier, higher than Sri Lanka’s record annual tourist arrivals of 654,476 reached last year.
The arrivals rose 32.8 percent in October from a year earlier to 69,563.
The government is targeting annual revenue of $2.75 billion by 2016 from 2.5 million expected visitors attracted by Sri Lanka’s beaches, hills and religious and historic sites, while aiming for $3 billion in foreign direct investment.
Sri Lanka has forecast 20 percent growth in visitor arrivals this year to more than 780,000 people. Last year, the industry grew at 46 percent. The island’s tourism industry drew $1.2 billion for investment in the first half of 2011.
Tourism revenue, which jumped 64.8 percent in 2010 to a record $575.9 million, has risen 48.1 percent in the first nine months of this year from a year earlier to $580.1 million, central bank data shows. (Reuters)
So cool cool. Long term, the trick is not just increasing numbers, it’s balancing numbers, revenue and environmental and cultural interests to provide a positive experience for everybody. After years of trouble and asterixes and travel warnings, however, it is nice to see the numbers ticking up. The country deserves it.
This just makes me so happy. I haven’t been back since 2009, looking forward to it.
The numbers are up but hotel occupancies are not quite so healthy.
With Europe’s economy looking shaky and the higher prices being quoted for SL, Nov/Dec may not be as good as expected.
I hear bookings are looking good for Jan., but I guess we cant compete with lower prices of far east destinations. I thought the floods in Thailand might divert some traffic here and expat Sri Lankans returning for the holidays will give things a boost. The long suffering hoteliers really need a break.
The country is a rare treasure, but we need to polish up related services in order to offer a good product to tourists while being mindful of conservation. I see high prices as a good thing as long as quality is maintained and good practices are followed. Better in the long run.
Because of our family’s nature of travelling, we get a whole bunch of offers. Usually we throw them away but once when SL became calmer, we decided to check offers and see where SL stands.
Not a very good position as far as pricing is concerned, not a very good position as far as advertising. Everything seem to comparable to most island offers except for those big game trips all over Africa. We got over 100 offers from various game reserves from Africa alone. South Africa, is very prominent, in all fronts. You should see the DVD accompanying the regular mail. Shot by professional videographers I am certain.
On the other hand, SL is competing against a lot of similar places for the similarly minded customers and I guess they can afford to be competitive in pricing. The country need to do some serious advertising. I think it should be a collective effort of institutes, government and ad agencies. Some ads we see over here, make you want to go to Fiji or Jamaica, right now.
We, a family of four will come to SL for two weeks and we are mostly staying in our own homes or relatives. But for some places where we have to stay in hotels, fees are same as what we would pay for a good hotel over here. We are staying mostly at Heritance in the south and in the north east.
Being able to fly around seem to very attractive and we will be using those services to the max.
Whatever the case I am looking forward to swim, dive and fish for some whales. I will be climbing Sigiriya too :)
‘You are never more than four hours from a beach, never more than 12 hours from anywhere, and you can experience everything from ancient ruins to snorkeling to amazing food and people, in a day’ – Very true. The change of climate, geography and vegetation within a small distance makes Sri Lanka a unique place for tourism.
Sri Lanka has wonderful potential, but there needs to be a sea change in at least two aspects: cleanliness of beaches and better service. Both can be wonderful, both can be incredibly disappointing. In fact, I’d say that the majority of my best experiences have been in smaller, cheaper establishments, where the staff really go out of their way to offer a friendly and attentive service (and don’t appear to be overwhelmed by the demands placed on them). I also prefer to patronise the local chaps, to put money in their pockets as much as possible.
Cleaning up the detritus that washes up on the beaches should be a matter of course, but it can often be overlooked. Improved pay and training are key to keep the best staff here, rather than leaving to find work abroad. As hotel prices have shot up, so must the level of service offered. The experience I had at Heritance was far better when it was $80 per night (with medium occupancy) than at $400 (with high occupancy). Mount Lavinia Hotel offered a wonderful setting, but amateurish service when my family stayed there in Jan this year: failing to provide rooms on time (after a long flight), failing to provide requested facilities (wheelchair friendly room location, non-slip mat for the bath), failing to fix a broken toilet, no apologies, slow and inattentive waiting staff and so on. The only way to get anything done was to be assertive to the point of rudeness, which sits ill and isn’t in my family’s nature. That said, they took it in their stride for the most part and they’ll be back next year.
We’re party responsible, of course. When we get poor service we don’t usually complain. I’m trying to make sure that I inform managers when I get good service so that the best staff get a pat on the back in addition to a healthy tip. Indi, your post presents a sound excuse to get exploring and indulge in some of Sri Lanka’s best offerings. For a small island, there’s a lot of choice of locations, accommodation and environments. Next stop Hill country, perhaps?
Not destroying the beauty of the place by putting up ugly shacks, some called hotels/guest houses and others restaurant/beer garden at every nook and corner, especially in forest reserves and otherwise desecration the environment would be a plus.
A lot of destruction is taking place in the name of tourism and no one seems to realise that we may permanently harm long term prospects by this.