SRI Lanka Tourism: A Step Forward in the Growth Story
HVS published an article in June 2011, providing an overview of the tourism landscape in Sri Lanka and the various factors that could lead to robust tourism growth in the country after the war ended in 2009. The article also included the tourism vision for the country and its objective of achieving 2.5 million tourist arrivals by 2016. This article seeks to highlight how that vision of tourism growth has been translating into a reality in the past two years with improvements in infrastructure, tourist arrivals and tourism earnings, and hotel market performances. Having followed the Sri Lanka market closely since the last two years, performing market studies, feasibilities, and valuations in different parts of the country including Colombo and other emerging destinations, HVS believes that the growth story continues for Sri Lanka. In this article, we have analyzed the Colombo hotel market and the Southwest Coast resort market to evaluate the impact of the growth in the economy and tourist arrivals on hotel performances in these regions.