Trouble in tourism: Part 2

Let’s let them discover the entire tapestry of value and appeal that Sri Lanka represents and can showcase – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara 

There is a drive to “go local” with products and food and other elements of providing hospitality. And with a country with such local bounty, indeed we should. However, these have to be communicated not as “bans” on imported items, but a proud sharing of local treasures, unavailable anywhere else. We should be promoting the originality and verve and glory of these

The bonus plank

So, at our conference entitled “Rebuilding Sri Lanka”, with an aim of attracting six million tourists and more, sustainably, through the initiatives to be undertaken, we looked at a “bonus” area of focus.

On this front, some movement has taken place, though I think it hasn’t been fully undertaken with the real “end in mind.” The primary aim is to make it easier for people to come here. 

Now, where there has certainly been movement is liberalising the tourist visa regime. However, this has two issues. On the one hand, there is a drive to “go local” with products and food and other elements of providing hospitality. And with a country with such local bounty, indeed we should. 

However, these have to be communicated not as “bans” on imported items, but a proud sharing of local treasures, unavailable anywhere else. We should be promoting the originality and verve and glory of these. 

However, we must make our peace with the fact that about 10% of what people will be looking for are irreplaceable…champagnes, wines, cheeses, pates, meats, certain condiments, top end coffees, artisanal chocolates, and there must be a steady, reliable supply. 

We have local chocolates, so make those more attractive to provide, but do not make others “impossible” to access for those willing to pay. Anyway, this is a diversion. As one of our leading bankers pointed out during the conference, this core group of “rare” or “luxe” or “specialised” imports will amount to at most 10% of the overall cost of operations. So we protect that fund, it’s the cheapest part (despite their “expensive accoutrements) of running those operations. And everywhere else, let’s glory in our native treasures, let’s brand them, let’s quality control them, let’s communicate them.

Sri Lanka can have a flood of income by being the easiest place for established and growing companies, and established and talented professionals who can sustain themselves, to live and contribute. Make it rational for the best to be here, make it a pleasure, when what we otherwise offer as a culture and a geography is so seductive

Also, if you are seeking to bring people in for a week, they will relish the “substitutions”. They can switch to Arrack cocktails, and experiment with more (to them) “exotic” flavours. But if we are seeking to woo them away from high fuel costs in a cold European winter besieged by inflation, to come here for four months instead, then they will expect more of what they consider global “essentials” and not just local “finds.” 

And we are indeed offering “multiple-entry” tourist visas for key countries over years, and then we are competing with “living” not “visiting” in say Thailand, Malaysia, Seychelles, Mauritius, Bali, Dubai and elsewhere, where there are proudly presented local goods as well as having the “the world” on tap.

So short-term substitutions are one thing, but we need sustained strategies to provide sustained competitiveness in our tourism proposition. And “low cost” as a source of competitiveness is like oxygen to a fire, “necessary” in some ways but far from “sufficient.”

Beyond tourists, we should also focus on expatriates and others such as digital nomads – a growing fascination around the world. We should make it easier for people to establish themselves here. We should be the easiest place for talented people and high growth companies to be established (the UAE has started issuing “entrepreneur’s visas” and the UK has “scale up” company visas to allow for talent to be recruited from anywhere).

It should be fast, stress-free, easy to renew, with clarity re funds to be retained, and utter reliability in terms of being able to remit or deploy the rest.

We heard the frustration of expatriates who have lived and invested here for 20 years and still have to go through an agonising and frankly insulting annual or bi-annual visa renewal process and are unsure how they will get funds gathered here out of the country.

If you are seeking to bring people in for a week, they will relish the “substitutions”. They can switch to Arrack cocktails, and experiment with more (to them) “exotic” flavours. But if we are seeking to woo them away from high fuel costs in a cold European winter besieged by inflation, to come here for four months instead, then they will expect more of what they consider global “essentials” and not just local “finds”

And companies would much rather establish their base of regional operations here than in Mumbai or Karachi or Dhaka, due to the attractiveness of Colombo, and if we leveraged our hospitality and our high education rate and our diversity, we could indeed blossom into South Asia’s IT and service hub. 

But if it takes months to get your company registered and multiple months to try and get visas for people who are clearly needed, and who will be on expat packages and will contribute to the local economy and to quality of life here, then people eventually will get exasperated and plan to go elsewhere. 

You can have a Free Zone company in Fujairah set up in 48 hours, with residency visa, banking privileges, and tax-free income. Perhaps the Port City advent will help us fast-track this, but how and for whom those privileges will be applicable still needs to be clearly spelled out and explained, so it can factor into corporate and entrepreneurial planning.

Sri Lanka can have a flood of income by being the easiest place for established and growing companies, and established and talented professionals who can sustain themselves, to live and contribute. Make it rational for the best to be here, make it a pleasure, when what we otherwise offer as a culture and a geography is so seductive. 

So these were the planks we presented. Out of the conference came multiple, tangible initiatives that are being progressed, each by a key leader, with a small core team of those passionate to make this work. These are reviewed each month and in the first few months, key milestones have been identified and key metrics have been established.

Key initiatives: 

• Selection and appointment of champions/ambassadors for provinces or key epicentres – through which to identify what tourism improvement needs are and how they can be integrated with the life of the community
• Strategies for “shifting the narrative” and seeking to positively influence travel advisories 
• Strategies for communicating the importance and positive effects of tourism in Sri Lanka to the general public
• Influencing Government stakeholders to facilitate preferred supplies to the tourism industry, consistently clarifying that this is justified to bring in the forex that will improve everyone’s lives 
• Movie Tourism – To build on past successes and prime the pump for the future
• Brainstorm ways the industry can do very focused limited investment on the fuel front to insulate itself from the short-term vicissitudes of the crisis, justifying any investment undertaken or fund created on a rational, relatively short-term ROI basis 

• Creating an outreach to selected companies to ‘spot invest’ as discussed, if only their CSR or marketing budgets initially to bring in quick wins to enhance the tourist experience for a town or attraction they ‘adopt.’ Identify the key moments of truth of that experience and contribute to wherever they can on the theory that ‘winning is beginning.’ 
• Launch a strategy for our proposed service benchmark, ‘The Gold Standards’ to be rolled out. If to be delivered via a separate Institute, agreeing how to initially focus as suggested on established hotels and hospitality providers, and then eventually, for these to become a national standard 
• Digital improvements to key tourist experiences to be identified and implementation mapped out 
• Airport moments of truth to be benchmarked as discussed for arrival and departure 
• Utilising the railway tracks of Sri Lanka to enhance tourism, cargo and people movement. Currently only about 2% of the laid tracks are deployed, a dispiriting waste.

It has been two months roughly since these were crafted. 

Many of these initiatives would have frankly moved much faster if the promise for support from the Government had been more readily forthcoming. I will be very honest in sharing our collective frustration on this front. What we needed, at the very least, was essentially endorsement and facilitation and we had key Government people at the conference, they were co-architects of these initiatives. 

There is nowhere to hide, there are no excuses to be made. The world loves Sri Lanka, let us exult in that reality. Let’s add some Gold Standards to the natural warmth and have companies here put their CSR into improving customer experiences. Let’s gather our crown jewels into niches and let’s make Sri Lanka an easy place not only for tourists, but for expatriates, for conferences, for companies – so that we can truly become the hub for South Asia. We have the education, the energy, the assets and the ability to become what we aspire to be on these fronts.

They gave the ideas full support, they made wonderful contributions, and they showered these with enthusiasm. Yet when it has come time to actualise them, which requires somebody to initiate, or influence, to nudge, or to put us in touch with the right person in charge of an area or explain how legislatively or logistically something could be done, we have too often been chasing our tail. 

We have spent our time chasing people, seeking and having inconclusive meetings, as more and more announcements of committees and other things are made, which don’t in fact add much to what has been generated here, other than complexity. Our request as I write remains the same. 

To any other group working in or on tourism, please let us integrate our efforts, let us not duplicate them. Nobody needs to own this. This is not a vanity play. We have different personalities leading these initiatives, some of the most credible people have stepped up and volunteered their commitment and their passion. We would be humbled to have your help. Honoured to contribute to your efforts. 

But we also say to our Government, with your help these could all be fast tracked. We have instances of things that are just stuck and have been stuck for some time. There is the visa website at the airport which we are told has not been revised in 12 years. There was the curious case of the persistent power cuts in Galle each evening for weeks at dinner hour while the cricketers and their entourages were there. 

We have the initiative about the railway tracks, where only 2% are being utilised as cited above. We have the lack of response to the movie tourism drive, where we have an initiative linked to an upcoming popular movie where somebody is ready to push that forward and indeed financial support has been pledged. 

We have heartening statements about “solutions” re fuel and energy needs for this sector, and then scant little seems to follow through.

As we continue look forward to some more of this support being forthcoming, we certainly realise how overwhelming the national challenges currently are, but the metabolism of this has to speed up. 

As cited, we have an opportunity to reach out to the PR companies in the UK ahead of the booking season, but somebody has to brief them carefully. Costs are not cataclysmic. If we went around from the Government’s access to tourism related funding and the private sector we could raise it in an afternoon. Why focus there? Well, UK citizens have never stopped coming even despite advisories over this last summer, and if we could convey a richer and more nuanced narrative, we could tap their affection for Sri Lanka and we could get a gusher. 

But if we don’t speed up we may miss the potential of this season, and if we miss this winter season we’re in for a lot of grief, because then even with the IMF funding we are in for the infliction of considerable austerity and the impact it’s going to have on the population, unmitigated, could be horrifying.

So, I thought I should write this to make these efforts, however imperfect, visible. To highlight the fact that we have rich possibilities on this front – there are ideas and they are tangible ones, and I’m sure many companion ideas that can be mined. 

These are ideas that are within our circle of influence all of us, but we have to stop bickering and politicking. I will be transparent and say that everything that has been done by our colleagues, has been driven by the love of Sri Lanka from those who came to the conference and stepped up, adding their own experience and judgment. 

But there are inevitably items that will require funding. There are professionals involved, they have to date, donated time and energy. 

To any other group working in or on tourism, please let us integrate our efforts, let us not duplicate them. Nobody needs to own this. This is not a vanity play. We have different personalities leading these initiatives, some of the most credible people have stepped up and volunteered their commitment and their passion. We would be humbled to have your help. Honoured to contribute to your efforts. But we also say to our Government, with your help these could all be fast tracked. We have instances of things that are just stuck and have been stuck for some time

Certain things however should be paid for. Anybody for example asking for a website being developed or PR campaign from global providers are expecting to pay quite naturally. It would then be insulting if we begrudged value being shared with those here, where they can provide equivalent services for much less, and who would do it with a patriotic zeal and who would do it with a sense of urgency. I’m sure we will find ways to honour their contribution.

So finally, there is nowhere to hide, there are no excuses to be made. The world loves Sri Lanka, let us exult in that reality. Let’s add some Gold Standards to the natural warmth and have companies here put their CSR into improving customer experiences. Let’s gather our crown jewels into niches and let’s make Sri Lanka an easy place not only for tourists, but for expatriates, for conferences, for companies – so that we can truly become the hub for South Asia. We have the education, the energy, the assets and the ability to become what we aspire to be on these fronts.

So let’s do everything we reasonably can to entice people here, and let’s let them discover the entire tapestry of value and appeal that Sri Lanka represents and can showcase. Our tourism doesn’t need bluster. It should be helping others to discover and to celebrate from a true embarrassment of riches.

(The writer is the founder and CEO of EPL Global and founder of Sensei Lanka, a global consultant with over 30 years strategic leadership experience and now, since March 2020, a globally recognised COVID researcher and commentator.)

Trouble in tourism: Part 1