Ukraine troubles spells uncertainty for SL tourism

Sri Lanka has lately been dependent on its Eastern European traveller and one of the key markets is Ukraine but there is uncertainty whether arrivals could be impacted due to a political crisis in that country.

One of the key travel agents engaged in generating traffic from this region said that they had not yet seen any cancellations and believed that travellers were likely to continue to patronise Colombo even from Ukraine.

They noted that they had not seen a significant reduction in numbers and the same numbers that visited the country pre- COVID-19 continued to come to arrive.

However, Tourist Hotels Association President M. Shanthikumar told the Business Times that bookings are getting cancelled and noted that this Ukraine crisis is likely to become an issue during these challenging times.

This is likely to impact on the beach resorts and its impact on arrivals could reflect significantly, he said adding that India too that topped arrivals to Sri Lanka is now seeing a drop due to the spread of the pandemic as people are become more reluctant to travel.

In addition the UK traffic is also likely to be impacted as the pandemic is spreading fast and it could result in more cancellations though this is yet to be felt, Mr. Shanthikumar said.

In the meantime, the tourism industry is still banking on hopes that the government will restructure their loans as their moratoriums end in June 2022, the THASL President said.