SLT collaborates with international travel influencers to keep alive ‘Sri Lankan Holiday’ dream

Destination Sri Lanka is held high in the minds of the global traveller community as a ‘ hotspot’ teeming with an unbelievable diversity of attractions far beyond its cute proportions.

“History tells us that our diminutive island is the planet’s most enchanting wonderland that has incessantly drawn explorers, emperors, conquerors and not even resisting calculating merchants trekking the silk route, who suddenly got high on the spice trail. Since then, Sri Lanka has been inundated with travellers at our gate, who are drawn for more reasons than one,” said Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau ( SLTPB) in a media release highlighting the attractions in the country.

When the coronavirus pandemic broke out, tourism in Sri Lanka and worldwide came to a grinding halt. The economy and industry stakeholders both big and small faced a major blow. They were inclined to limit their tourism related activities due to frequent lockdowns, travel bans and health restrictions. Tourist arrivals declined, and the entire tourism industry across the world experienced a major challenge like never before, it said.

SLTPB says this pandemic calm has its silver-lining opportunities. It has prudently decided to stay up-beat, turning proactive, making doubly sure the Post COVID Tourism prospect safely transpires in Sri Lanka’s favour.

It has commissioned travel bloggers, who were on assignment under the Travel Influencer Programme with a strong Social Media following from key source markets worldwide.

Numerous destination promotional press trips have been in progress with International Travel Influencers covering diverse geographical locations of the island, including Jaffna, Central Highlands, Anuradhapura, lesser known Sabaragamuwa Province ( Belihuloya) and suburban Colombo.

SLTPB hosted USA based Travel You Tuber and Blogger Johnny Jens who runs his channel as @ Johnny FD. His channel audiences of considerable numbers are from the US, UK, Australia and Germany and his posts on YouTube and other Social Media platforms have generated quite a number of views from across the world. He maintains a fan base dedicated to view and explore hitherto rare and unheard of attractions of Sri Lanka.

The Visiting Blogger Programme, since its inception, has hosted over 150 Travel Influencers ( also recognized as # slbloggers) and Content Creators covering all the key inbound source markets. During the lockdown, Sri Lanka Tourism engaged with these travel influencers and encouraged recreating various Social Media posts on Sri Lanka to maintain destination visibility and popularity as a safe and exciting holiday destination to consider after the pandemic pass over.

Together these combined travel influencers have created over 540 posts on various travel blogs and popular social media platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the global arena. They have to date reached up to 6 million global audiences. Their estimated overall engagements counted a massive 2,590,000 as of August 10, 2020. The total commercial value of this combined promotion is equivalent to Rs. 30 million, the statement said.