Ten-year master plan to boost tourism

Jayasiri MUNASINGHE

COLOMBO: The Government is planning to boost the local tourism industry by introducing a variety of new attractions including observation of jumbos and whales. The project is estimated to cost Rs. 16,106 million over a period of ten years.

The Government targets to exceed the two million limit of tourist arrivals by the year 2016. The ten-year development plan for tourism is intended to upgrade the industry as the third largest foreign exchange earner from its present position of fourth.

The project is designed to attract the up market tourist and increase his spending rate of USD 64 per day at present to USD 150 per day.

The newly appointed Minister of Tourism Milinda Moragoda is currently busy with the study of the ten-year development plan for tourism on the advice of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Minister Moragoda expects to develop the tourism industry in Sri Lanka to make it the capital tourist destination in the South Asian Region within the next ten years as envisaged in the Mahinda Chintana.

This colossal expenditure amounting to Rs. 16,106 million will be utilized for the Development of holiday resorts, improvement and promotion of tourist marketing facilities, development of human resources, development of resources of tourism, rural development based tourism development, implementation of awareness programmes, introduction of elephants and whales observation centres, creation of tourist facilities at locations which are tourist attractions, and development of tourist facilities at locations of archaeological value.

According to the plan drawn out by the Government, out of this amount, Rs. 5738 million will be spent from 2007 to 2009, Rs. 5218 from 2010 to 2012 and Rs. 5150 from 2013 to 2016.

To achieve this target of two million tourist arrivals by 2016, the Government is mainly concerned to reduce the number of tourist arrivals on all inclusive packages and attract tourists who spend lavishly who come as free and independent tourists.

The Government hopes to expand the tourist market by introducing new products, by creating more entertaining environments and by making prolonged stays by the tourists.

The Minister said that plans have already been mooted to increase the number of those employed in the Tourism industry to 350,000 by the year 2010 and to increase it upto 500,000 by the year 2016.

Minister Moragoda said the main intention of his Ministry is to create a tourism industry which would give more priority for clean natural products and to safeguard wildlife indigenous to the country and to protect sites with cultural and archaeological values.

The Minister mentioned that new trends based on environment, agriculture, education, health, cultural, sports and recreation is now in the process of developing in the world and the Ministry plans to improve the country's tourism sector identifying these new trends.

He said under this ten-year plan the Ministry also intends to encourage more investors to invest in the tourism sector, to improve the aviation and railway sectors to attract more tourists and to have a qualitative improvement of facilities and services at tourist hotels.

"In this regard we intend to work together with the BOI, Ministries of Sports, Religious Affairs, Cultural Affairs, Environment, Health and all the other Ministries related to the tourism sector", the Minister added.