CNN blitz gets “conditional” approval

The Government this week approved the CNN blitz set to promote the destination but subject to certain observations by the Finance Ministry.

Tourism Ministry officials told the Business Times that the CNN campaign was approved at this week’s cabinet meeting but that the amount allocated US$ 650,000 was an issue as a result the ministry has been asked to follow the procurement guidelines in entering into an agreement on such a campaign.

The Finance Ministry has asked the Tourism Ministry to follow government procurement guidelines as it had not agreed with the amount that had been entered into by the ministry and CNN.

Tourism Development Minister John Amaratunga told the Business Times on Friday that the cabinet had approved the CNN campaign and that they would start airing the adverts and programmes in about two weeks.

He also said that the digital campaign was taking time due to the procedures involved in the bureaucratic system.

Meanwhile there have been further delays in the selection of the agencies that submitted bids for the conduct of the campaigns in five selected markets - the UK, Germany, France, India and China - for the digital marketing campaign scheduled to kick off in June.

It is learnt that a recently retired advertising guru, appointed earlier this

month as a consultant, has been involved in the selection of the agencies from these markets.

This has resulted in further delays for a campaign prompting industry representations on the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Board to request an urgent board meeting to discuss about this issue.