SriLankan Airlines launches websites in Sinhala and Tamil to optimise customer convenience

SriLankan Airlines Chairman Ajith Dias launching Sinhala and Tamil websites at the public launch event held at the World Trade Center – Pic by Sameera Wijesinghe

National carrier, SriLankan Airlines on Tuesday launched full-fledged Sinhala and Tamil language options on its website www.srilankan.com to better facilitate the air travel of people throughout the country as part of their latest marketing campaign on the theme of ‘Be Sri Lankan, Fly SriLankan’.

SriLankan Airlines CEO Captain Suren Ratwatte said: “SriLankan Airlines has for 37 years been the largest carrier of passengers into and out of Sri Lanka, and we will continue into the foreseeable future. One of our main priorities is to cater to the travel needs of all Sri Lankans, and we are delighted to introduce our national languages on our website.”

The airline also partnered with four leading banks namely Bank of Ceylon, Commercial Bank, Sampath Bank and Hatton National Bank to assist its customers with the payments for their online ticket reservations.     

Noting that there are over one million credit cardholders in the country, out of which 600,000 are active users he said the tie up with the four banks would help any person to make use of the online offers SriLankan Airlines introduces throughout the year even without a bank account or a credit card.

“A person can reserve seats by simply logging into our website without having to pay online. We hold the reservation for 48 hours, while the customer could make the payment via any of the nominated bank branches islandwide or through their ATMs,” an official said. 

He highlighted that there is a noteworthy shift from the traditional travel agents ticket reservations to online. 

“Every airline is now pushing for online bookings as it helps to reduce their distribution cost. We save almost about $18 to $19 for a passenger who’s making the ticket reservation online. Thus the online booking would definitely revolutionise the air travel business,” he pointed out. 

Commenting on the online market growth of SriLankan Airlines he asserted that over three million Sri Lankans fly annually and of that 10% book tickets online, while the balance still prefer the traditional method with travel agents. However, with the high internet penetration there is a significant shift towards online bookings at the airline.

SriLankan re-launched its website in April 2016, with state of the art features and has since added 12 language options in English, Arabic, French, German, Japanese, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese with dedicated home pages for many countries it flies to, in order to optimise levels of convenience for local customers.

 “At the beginning we were touching almost about 8.87%, but within a span of 12 months we have almost reached 12% and we are confident of achieving the given overall target of 15% by the end of the financial year,” he added.

Although the overall target is 15% individual country targets vary. “Around 50% of reservations recorded from Singapore are online, while Malaysia is 23%, Thailand 27% and Dubai 23%.”

SriLankan Chief Commercial Officer Siva Ramachandran said: “The national carrier has continuously expanded our services to Sri Lankan customers through a variety of methods. The Sinhala and Tamil language enabled website offers our valued customers flexibility and added convenience whenever they wish to use the web services of the airline.”

The Sinhala and Tamil sites can be accessed from all types of instruments - desktops, laptops, tabs or smart phones – and contain all of the wide range of information and tools which the English language site does. These include the latest promotional offers, an extremely user-friendly ticket booking facility, managing one’s existing bookings, on-line check-in, pre-ordering of meals, purchasing of duty free items, requesting child care, viewing flight schedules, checking on the status of any flight, making group bookings, information on the airline’s frequent flyer programme FlySmiLes, and much more.

The site also contains all types of corporate news on SriLankan Airlines including details of SriLankan’s superb on-board entertainment system and in-flight cuisine and comforts, information on its fleet of state of the art all-Airbus aircraft, airport services, SriLankan Holidays, SriLankan Cargo, the airline’s campaign for environmental conservation, and its CSR arm SriLankan Cares.

SriLankan Airlines, a member of the prestigious oneworld global airline alliance, has a worldwide network spanning 100 destinations in 48 countries.