Sri Lanka - Maldives in joint tourist promotions agreement
The visiting Maldivian Deputy Tourism Minister Abdul Hameed Zakariyya yesterday said that Sri Lanka and Maldives have reached agreement on a joint tourist promotion for Chinese market.
"Sri Lanka and Maldives are not competitors in tourism. You have the culture and environment and we have the beaches," he said.
Sri Lanka has been collaborating with Maldives since the early seventies and the first charter group to Maldives flew on board a Royal Ceylon Airforce plane, he said.
Sri Lanka's Deputy Tourism Minister Faizer Musthapha said there are many ways that the two countries could gain by promoting tourism jointly. There is a Joint Task Force set up in 2003 May, to explore the possibility of promoting tourism. However earlier Maldives were only concentrating on the inbound traffic, but now they are seriously thinking of promoting packages to Sri Lanka too.
Zakariyya appreciated the concern shown by the Sri Lanka government about Maldives students in hospitality industry and said that Sri Lanka's Tourism Minister Milinda Moragoda has offered 25 scholarships to train Maldivian students at the Ceylon Hotel School (CHS). These students will follow a five month certificate level course and will join the school in January, a CHS source said adding that the Maldivian government has laid much emphasis on developing Human Resource Management.
"Twelve percent of tourist hotels in the Maldives are owned or operated by Sri Lankan companies and of the 11,000 Sri Lankans working in the Maldives, 2,600 are employed in the tourism industry," Zakariyya pointed out.
"Most of the expatriate employees in the hotel sector are from Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh," he said.
Speaking about the tourist arrival figures, he said that Maldives has a projected target of 650,000 tourists for this year and last year the figure was 602,000 while in 2005 Maldives enjoyed an occupancy of 450,000. An average tourist stays 8.4 days and spends USD 115 per day for extras (excluding the hotel charges)
There are nearly 27,000 Maldivians visiting Sri Lanka and this figure could be increased with proper marketing, he added.
"Sri Lankan Airlines has figured prominently in Maldives tourism bringing in a large chunk of tourists to Male," he explained.
"Sri Lanka and Maldives are not competitors in tourism. You have the culture and environment and we have the beaches," he said.
Sri Lanka has been collaborating with Maldives since the early seventies and the first charter group to Maldives flew on board a Royal Ceylon Airforce plane, he said.
Sri Lanka's Deputy Tourism Minister Faizer Musthapha said there are many ways that the two countries could gain by promoting tourism jointly. There is a Joint Task Force set up in 2003 May, to explore the possibility of promoting tourism. However earlier Maldives were only concentrating on the inbound traffic, but now they are seriously thinking of promoting packages to Sri Lanka too.
Zakariyya appreciated the concern shown by the Sri Lanka government about Maldives students in hospitality industry and said that Sri Lanka's Tourism Minister Milinda Moragoda has offered 25 scholarships to train Maldivian students at the Ceylon Hotel School (CHS). These students will follow a five month certificate level course and will join the school in January, a CHS source said adding that the Maldivian government has laid much emphasis on developing Human Resource Management.
"Twelve percent of tourist hotels in the Maldives are owned or operated by Sri Lankan companies and of the 11,000 Sri Lankans working in the Maldives, 2,600 are employed in the tourism industry," Zakariyya pointed out.
"Most of the expatriate employees in the hotel sector are from Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh," he said.
Speaking about the tourist arrival figures, he said that Maldives has a projected target of 650,000 tourists for this year and last year the figure was 602,000 while in 2005 Maldives enjoyed an occupancy of 450,000. An average tourist stays 8.4 days and spends USD 115 per day for extras (excluding the hotel charges)
There are nearly 27,000 Maldivians visiting Sri Lanka and this figure could be increased with proper marketing, he added.
"Sri Lankan Airlines has figured prominently in Maldives tourism bringing in a large chunk of tourists to Male," he explained.
posted by Don @ September 04, 2007
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