“More high end rooms required to attract 3 Mn arrivals”

Sri Lanka urgently needs to add more star class high end rooms to the island hotel inventory if the country is looking to attract more than 3 million arrivals from 2025 and beyond, said veteran hotelier and founder Chairman Island Leisure Chandana Amaradasa.

Speaking to media during the sidelines of their 15th anniversary he said that today the country has around 45,000 star class classified rooms out of which most are in the City. He said out of the other rooms out of Colombo most of them are not high end and this will not give the desired revenue expectation to the countries from the industry.He said that the new government announced that some of the abandoned state buildings in Colombo as well as some of the circuit bungalows in rural areas would be given out to the private sector to be developed as high end boutique hotels is a very good move.

“Similarly the government must look at giving out state land to the private sector and international hotel chains to build and open hotels which will bring in the high spenders to Sri Lanka. He said for over six years no focused international marketing campaign was not held and this should be done as the ‘money’ for this is readily available with the Ministry of Tourism.

Asked if the current hotel rates are too high in comparison to other competing countries like Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia he said it was so. “But you can’t compare the ‘value for money product’ that Sri Lanka offers to these countries.”

Amaradasa, Former Senior Manager of Taj Hotels, Sri Lanka Former Vice president of Ceylon Hotels Graduates Association said that the brain drain in the industry is an issue but the local staff who go abroad must think twice before doing so. “I too had the opportunity to work overseas but declined and started my own company and looking back I am happy with what I have achieved with Island Leisure as today we are an international award winning destination management company in Sri Lanka.”

He also said that sports tourism is a major area and he brought his large groups for cricket and golf and many other MICE groups.

“We handle most of the corporates, leisure, sports, high end luxury FIT clients, religious tours and large scale of MICE tours in Sri Lanka for over 3,500 clients annually.”

“I recommend that people trying to go overseas look at starting their own leisure sector based investment in Sri Lanka as the country now offers more to them.”

“I could do more if there is a bigger conference hall as we only have BMICH which is not large enough.”

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