Sri Lanka is looking to attract over 250,000 Chinese travellers by 2016 while China is pledging to provide assistance to develop Sri Lanka's tourism industry…
COLOMBO- Strengthening the long standing ties with Sri Lanka, China recently assured Sri Lanka of new assistance to help boosting the islands fortune by bringing more tourists. Some programs will help to increase destination awareness in the Chinese market. Member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China and the Central Committee Liu Yunshan who made the announcement during a trip to Sri Lanka following a meeting held at the Prime Minister’s Office on Monday September 09, 2013. Mr. Liu Yunshan also said that the friendship between the two countries has reached an important landmark at present.
Sri Lankan leaders including Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa and Prime Minister DM Jayaratne were present to the event held for signing three bilateral cooperation agreements of tri-sentimental developments in Sri Lanka including Education, Tourism and Cultural Affairs. Three agreements related to the fields of education, Tourism and Culture have been signed between Sri Lanka and China on this day.
Under the agreement, China will provide support to its media channels and experts to develop International level television programmes with producing and publishing Sri Lankan documentaries and articles to all mainstream media in China. They will also grant special cooperation to carry out promotional campaigns in order to create awareness of the Sri Lanka among Chinese travellers. This agreement was signed by the Managing Director of Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau , Mr.Rumy Jauffer and the Chief Editor of China Central Television Mr. Luo Ming.
This agreement is seen as a timely move to develop tourism industry in Sri Lanka at a juncture where Chinese tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka is on a steady rise, as the country has received a growing number of Chinese tourists during the first seven months of this year, which is a year on year increase of 74%. The latest jump shows encouraging signs as the Government of Sri Lanka to capture a slice out of the growing Chinese outbound tourism market, which during the year 2012 in total stood at 83 million tourists. Sri Lanka Tourism aims towards attracting 2.5 million tourists per annum by year 2016 including 275,000 Chinese travelers by year 2016. The city of Beijing announced recently to support a familiarization trip for 300 Beijing-based travel agents to Sri Lanka.
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
