Tourism development and minimum hotel room rate

The Hoteliers Association of Sri Lanka is in a world of its own in requesting the Government to bring back minimum hotel rates. There is no country in the world to our knowledge that governments get involved in fixing hotel room rates. 

The only country that had a fixation on minimum spend is Bhutan. Now they too are not very stringent on insisting on minimum spend and as a result room rates in Bhutan too have dropped. Why do our hoteliers fear competition? Cost of maintaining a room depends on spend in construction and mobilisation. It is more cost effective to have 100% occupancy than spend on maintaining empty rooms. Some hotels around the world oversell their rooms and when full transfer guests to other locations close by. This happened in some beach front hotels of paradise in the past.  Room rates and hotel of choice is open to travellers all over the world with e-booking sites. Less and less holiday travellers stay in expensive locations unless on business or expenses are corporate. Holiday travellers try to stretch their spend to enable them to travel more often and visit more places.  

Hotel room is for spending a night. All they need is a comfortable bed and a clean toilet. They prefer to spend their funds on food and visits to enchanting locations

A study done by Travel Daily TD of UK showed that six million Brits have already planned their summer travel. The majority of travellers are below 40 and are budget travellers who travel for fun, food and adventure. 

To determine the cheapest destinations, TD looked at the cost of eight things that tourists regularly buy when they’re abroad. This included: a three-course evening meal with a bottle of wine or bottle of beer or glass of wine or can of Coke or bottle of water, cup of coffee, sun cream and insect repellent.

Out of the 42 destinations it analysed, 33 have seen a price decrease of around 10% to Brits. According to TD, this drop is as a result of the strengthening pound, which directly cut the cost of holiday essentials in 19 places it analysed.

Cheapest destinations + holiday essentials 2020

Sunny Beach Bulgaria – £30.68, Marmaris Turkey – £ 44.15, Tokyo, Japan – £48.21, Algarve Portugal – £49.87, Costa del Sol Spain – £53.16, Cape Town South Africa – £59.39, Hoi An Vietnam – £59.49, Bali Indonesia – £61.43, Prague Czech Republic – £63.02, Paphos Cyprus – £63.22, Sliema Malta – £66.72, Mombasa Kenya – £66.95, Colombo Sri Lanka – £68.39, St. John Antigua – £70.51, Orlando USA – £75.25, Corfu Greece – £75.91, Budapest Hungary – £78.49, Porec Croatia – £79.43, Cancun Mexico – £83.69, Nice France – £89.31

As seen above, Sri Lanka is an expensive destination.

If Sri Lanka is to encourage five million visitors and pump up revenue to $ 10 m by 2020/2021, we have to get out of the frog in the well attitude. So Sri Lanka, kick yourself.