Business magnate Dhammika Perera says that Sri Lanka will be unable to achieve its target of four million tourist arrivals, without proper connectivity.
The Co-Chairman of Hayleys PLC made this observation while responding to a question during a panel discussion at the Tourism Leaders’ Summit and International Research Symposium held October 04 at the BMICH in Colombo.
“Achieving the four million target by 2020 would be very difficult without proper connectivity,” he said.
“We need at least another 20 more flights into the country on a daily basis. Spending money on promotion and marketing would be worthless without fixing this problem,” Perera said.
He emphasized that Sri Lanka’s natural arrival growth is around 5-10 percent and therefore by 2020 the country could only get to three million tourists. According to him, however, that too would pose a challenge.
The third consecutive Tourism Leaders’ Summit and International Research Symposium was organized by the Department of Economics, University of Colombo under the theme of ‘Sustainable Tourism for Development: Way Forward for Sri Lanka’.
