Karnataka   

Sri Lanka mixes business with pleasure

— Photo: G.R.N. Somashekar

BIG PLANS: Prema Cooray (right), Chairman, Sri Lanka Convention Bureau, and Manoj Gunawardena, Head of Worldwide Passengers Sales, Sri Lankan Airlines, at a press conference in Bangalore on Thursday.

BANGALORE: Visiting pristine beaches and a number of world heritage sites in Sri Lanka coupled with corporate conferences could be a dream vacation mixed with business for many executives of corporate houses. Aimed at providing a stiff competition to Southeast Asian countries that are popular among the business houses for their annual meetings and conferences, Sri Lanka has unveiled attractive packages to lure Indian corporate houses.

A 40-member delegation of Sri Lanka Convention Bureau has embarked on a five-city promotional tour in India to create awareness of the meeting facilities in Sri Lanka among Indian corporates and travel agents by launching attractive packages.

The bureau members met representatives of various industries here on Thursday, and similar promotions will be held at Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai.

Bureau chief Prema Cooray told presspersons that they were promoting Sri Lanka as a conference venue as it had diversity to offer with beaches, hill country, forest and wildlife and world heritage sites as destinations for tourists.

Typically, Indian corporate travel for meetings and conferences last three or four days with a group size between 50 and 100 people, he added.

In association with Sri Lankan Airlines, attractive packages for corporate houses have been launched with a two-night and three-day package, including airfare, airport transfers and food arrangement for the meeting days.

Depending on more facilities, packages could be customised to suit the needs of the corporates. The group size should be a minimum of 20 people, he added.

“Indian corporate tourists arriving in Sri Lanka for meetings, conferences and exhibitions have been increasing at a rate of 15 per cent annually. Of the 1.2 lakh Indian tourists, 20,000 tourists were business travellers and the rest were leisure travellers,” he added.

Mr. Cooray said: “We wish to capture at least 10 per cent of the eight lakh outbound business travellers from India over the next two years. The Indian corporate houses will have the options to choose to meet the objective of the meeting and incentive market.”

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