Bentota: Sri Lanka’s tourism industry that is worth $4.4 billion has taken a big hit as tourists are cancelling their trips and avoiding the sun and sand of the island nation, after the serial suicide bombings that killed over 250 people on Easter Sunday, April 21.
It can be recalled that nine suicide bombers from small Islamic groups in Sri Lanka, had attacked churches and luxury hotels in the country, killing devotees and tourists.
Tourism accounts for five per cent of Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product, and is now suffering as tourists from the world over are cancelling hotel and flight bookings out of fear.
Commenting on the scenario, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena said in an interview on Saturday, that this is a major blow to the economy and the tourism industry. “It is important for tourism return to where it was before the attacks, if the economy is to develop,” he added.
Net hotel bookings dropped 186 percent on average over the week after the attacks, data from the travel consultancy ForwardKeys showed. This indicates that there are more cancellations than bookings.
Sri Lanka’s Tourism Bureau Chairman Kishu Gomes told Reuters that cancellation rates at hotels across the country averaged at 70 percent as of Saturday, with Colombo taking a much bigger hit.
Tourism took off in Sri Lanka, after the end of the decades-long civil war with Tamil separatists in 2009 and was Sri Lanka’s third largest and fastest growing source of foreign currency last year.
Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera has said that Sri Lanka will consider a tax amnesty programme for the tourism industry to help companies recover from the terrorist attacks. The industry has requested tax waivers, including on the import of security gear while at the Asian Development Bank meetings in Fiji.
“With the right action, tourism could return to normalcy within a short period time, maybe a year or a year and a half,” he said, adding that this has been the experience in destinations such as Tunisia and Bali, which also faced similar attacks in the past.
