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| 09/09/2007 - Sunday Observer | |||
| Netherlands relaxes travel advisory | |||
| (by Chanuka Mannapperuma) | |||
The Netherlands, has relaxed its travel advisory to enable Dutch tour operators to aggressively market Sri Lanka, said Tourist Board Chairman Renton de Alwis. “The advisory now states that Dutch travelers must be cautious when traveling and they must use formal means of transport and tour operations”, he said. The chairman said in 2006, there were 19,360 tourists from the Netherlands. Between January and July in 2006, the Dutch arrivals stood at 12,593 and for the same period in 2007, it was 10,083, registering a drop of 19.9 percent. “We expect the arrivals from the Netherlands now progressively to get back to normalcy with softening of the Travel advisory. We are also planning to carry out strong promotions in the Dutch market in the future to regain and develop strong market share”, he said. Speaking about future tourism promotions, he said, Tourism Minister Milinda Moragoda will leave for France and the Netherlands today to have discussions to recapture another important market segment. According to Alwis, with the softening of the French Travel Advisory, the Sri Lanka French tour operators are preparing to promote Sri Lanka for the Fall and Winter seasons and the French tour operators announced at their Annual General Meeting last Friday that destination Sri Lanka is open. Alwis said, France is an important market for Sri Lanka, from where around 30,000 tourists visit Sri Lanka annually making them the fourth largest in bound tourism market. French travelers generally spend an average of 11 nights in Sri Lanka and with the drop in arrivals due to adverse travel advisories, the industry incurred a loss of over 10 million Euris, he said. He said, with the softening of the travel advisories the Sri Lanka Embassy will do the ground work in preparation for the re-launch of destination Sri Lanka on September 11 at the UNESCO auditorium in Paris creating a ‘buzz’ about Sri Lanka a couple of days prior to the French Travel Fair in deuville scheduled for end September. |
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