Focus on weddings & M!CE
At Sri Lanka Tourism’s first Virtual Summit held recently, Kimarli Fernando, Chairperson, Sri Lanka Tourism spoke about the segments they will be targetting aggressively
As a panellist, Kimarli Fernando explained, “We had a gradual opening of the country. Like India, Sri Lanka also loves big weddings. So we allowed banquets to be held but only with 100 people. Regarding international tourists, we have a detailed guideline for them on our website which covers everything that they need to know. The auditing process to receive them is currently on.”
KEY SEGMENTS
Outlining the key segments that Sri Lanka wants to focus on going forward, Fernando said, “We had so many plans for the India market this year. So it’s really frustrating that everything we had planned has been held up now. But believe me it will be done the moment India opens up. The India market is exceptionally important for us.” She added that on priority are a few segments that the tourism board will aggressively target. The wedding segment is one of them and it plans to do a special familiarisation tour just for wedding planners later this year or early next year. The other important segment is M!CE. Sri Lanka has one of the biggest M!CE venues in the region called Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH) in Colombo which can cater to 1,500 pax given the present condition.
VENUE Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall in Colombo can cater to 1,500 pax