Sri Lanka not sexy enough for India?

By Cheranka Mendis

Sri Lanka must make itself “sexy” to attract high-end tourists from India, a market that is too big to be ignored, Chairman Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Hiran Cooray stated yesterday.

Sri Lanka, which has marketed itself as a great value for money destination, must now concentrate on catching the eye of the big fish in the Indian market – those who sit on the highest strata in the Indian economy.

Cooray, who assured that the high level Indians do not even think about Sri Lanka when planning holidays, said: “Why? Because we are not sexy enough. We have not marketed the destination to them. We have not told them we have fantastic hotels and fantastic activities for them to do. We are just going for the lowest end.”

“High net worth Indians expect high quality and I am not sure whether we can provide this at this moment in time. These are tourists who will pay US$ 1,000 for a night for quality,” Cooray said, noting that it is time for Sri Lanka to up both the products offered and its quality standards.

Indians are also impatient travellers who want things fast, he said unlike European travellers who are the most relaxed. “We have gotten used to European travellers and provide a slow service. We have to change and adopt ourselves to cater to their needs. We must position ourselves.”

If the country is to attract the high end tourists from India, which has been identified as having a large proportion of travellers due to its ever expanding middle class, Sri Lanka must drape itself in the sexiest outfits possible.

“We must make Sri Lanka a sexy destination for them to travel to and for that we need to go out there and definitely market ourselves,” Cooray said. If proper marketing is not laid out, Sri Lanka would go on catching the “wrong crowd” or the lower end tourists who find the present hotel rates in Colombo too expensive.

Cooray, who backed Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka (THASL) President Anura Lokuhetty in his assertion that Sri Lanka’s MICE tourism was moving backwards with less and less international conferences being held here, denied Lokuhetty’s claim that the reason for the dip was due to high rates in Colombo hotels.

“As Lokuhetty said, MICE tourism has decreased. However, in my opinion we are still selling low and aren’t high enough. High net worth Indians are used to paying over US$ 500 in their own country. We are losing this market share because we have been catering to the lowest end – to that end which thinks US$ 150 is too expensive,” he said. When it comes to Indians, you either love them or hate them, there is no in between, he added. They are hard to handle, however it is ‘the’ most important market, and “if you can’t get used to handling them, you might as well give up tourism,” he said. “It is not an easy market to handle; oftentimes they are noisy, rude, have no respect and no punctuality.”

However, with the growth of wealth, the Indian market is too big to be ignored. Sri Lankans must learn to handle them, he asserted. “We will kill the most important market if we don’t have the patience, enthusiasm and excitement to handle them. It’s a complex country with so many states, languages, behavioural patterns and food habits. We haven’t mastered the art of handling all of them.”

However, Sri Lanka needs to learn this fast if the country wants more Indian tourists in the country,

Lokuhetty stated to achieve the 2.5 million target by 2015, Sri Lanka should anticipate almost 518,000 tourists from its closest neighbour. “The ‘Way Forward’ document prepared by the Tourist Hotels Association expects travellers from India to be one-fifth of the expected number. This is about 518,000 persons,” Lokuhetty said.

Even though arrivals from India within the year are in focus, the country must work hard as many other countries are also trying to capture this market.

“Statistics also shows that the period of stay tourists are 8.8% in Sri Lanka,” he said, adding that the figure caught him by surprise since the expectation was for a much lower figure. “The figure might include long staying Indians which might have been the reason for the average to go up.” However, with popular feats like the Ramayana trail in which large groups stay for 10 nights on average, such increases could be possible. “Next week some 400 guests are coming to Sri Lanka for the Ramayana trails,” Lokuhetty revealed.

He noted that there had been a decrease in the number of SriLankan Airlines flights to India since 2007. It was revealed that in 2007 SriLankan had operated 100 flights to 11 cities in India. By 2009 the number had dropped to 71 and at present stands at 63, he said.

“Connectivity must be improved,” he acknowledged, “however unless we seriously concentrate on our marketing strategy, increasing the number of flights won’t bring the number of tourists the country needs,” he said.

“We have a wrong perception. We think everyone is waiting to come to Sri Lanka. I strongly suggest that we concentrate on consumer marketing.” He assured that the topic had been under discussion with officials from Sri Lanka Tourism as well. “We need to concentrate much more on India because for one it’s a close destination and the travel time is less.”

With long haul flying under threat due to fuel prices and environmental issues, regional tourism development would play an important role in uplifting the country’s economy. India, with its large middle class, is probably the best place to start.