Govt. mulls national policy for adventure tourism

The National Policy and Economic Affairs Ministry will be creating a national policy on standards for adventure tourism to address safety and service delivery qualities of the fast-developing industry, following discussions with key stakeholders.

The National Policy and Economic Affairs Ministry Central Project Management Unit, Policy Development Office of the Prime Minister’s Office and government tourism authorities recently convened a meeting of service providers and regulators to discuss the issue.

“The idea was to promote self regulation. There are international standards for all adventure activities. The need was for Sri Lankan standards, equal to the international standards to be developed. The Sri Lanka Bureau of Standards is already involved in this task,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said.

The stakeholders are determined to develop a website that will list all the locations where adventure activities are provided by service providers.

Further, in order to assess the status of the activities, the Sri Lanka Navy will convene a meeting of all water-based adventure service providers, while the Sri Lanka Army will do the same for landbased activities, and a meeting will be convened by the Sri Lanka Air Force for air-based activities.

“On the emergency communication and search and rescue, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC ) will coordinate with telecommunication service providers and health and emergency first responders, to have a common number to call in case of a crisis,” the statement added.

A National Standard Qualification for adventure trainers will be developed by the government, while the Sri Lanka Insurance Board will look into the insurance cover aspect of adventure providers and participants.