Tourist traffic snarls at 3 % pace in November
The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo had its first impact with tourism when the November figures were released last week indicating the slowest growth for the year in addition to the lack of adequate consumer based promotion in key markets.
November recorded the slowest growth rate of 3 per cent for the year so far while India and the UK were the top tourist generators with the total arrivals crossing the one million mark, tourist arrival figures released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority indicated.
This year’s monthly figures recorded the slowest growth for the year in November at 2.8 per cent compared to even other single digit increases like in March by 7.7 per cent and July 9.5 per cent. The highest growth recorded was in October at 27.9 per cent.
Moreover, the growth rates in the past few years also recorded higher increases in the month of November compared to this year with November 2010 growing at 63 per cent, November 2011 up by 26 per cent and in 2012 the same month moved up by 20 per cent.
Industry experts opine that significant and consistent marketing in the key tourist generating market was required to bring in the required numbers to the country. All echoed similar sentiments of CHOGM creating a dull atmosphere to November travellers as hoteliers were compelled to close at least six city hotels to tourist traffic in a bid to provide maximum security to the visiting delegates. In this regard, the industry pointed out that while most corporate travellers were willing to postpone their visits other holidaymakers however would have looked elsewhere.
It is believed that the tourist traffic could have slowed down due to the low turnout of tourists for the season due to most hotels shutting down their operations for holidaymakers as a result of the Commonwealth meeting taking place in Colombo.
While some noted that CHOGM should have ideally increased however, this was not the case from the Western European market since at least 50 per cent of the visitors to the country were from countries in this region.
The reason why CHOGM did not yield the necessary results was because it was “blowed up” that hotels would be full, hoteliers opined; but what transpired was that CHOGM bookings itself caused a revenue loss by at least 10-15 per cent compared to last year for the November period.
Indian traffic last month amounted to 19,779 persons visiting the country up by 12.2 per cent this year for the month while the UK travellers totalled 11,095 up by 2.5 per cent last month, statistics stated.
The total arrivals for the year upto November were 1. 02 million, up by 15 per cent with more tourists visiting last month from China at 5,330 and Russia at 7,563. Western Europe was down by 2.2 per cent with most countries like Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Netherlands and Norway showing a lower number of visitors. In addition, Middle East was also down at 3,395 compared to 6,151 last year. Japan also indicated a dip in arrivals down by 23.5 per cent at 2,435.
However, some other industry experts believe that though CHOGM was a damper on the November arrivals it would only be a “short term repercussion” and was expected to add value in the future.