Sri Lanka Convention Bureau awarded ‘Most Promising MICE Destination’ at BLTM India

At the two-day Business Leisure and Luxury Travel Mart (BLTM) that concluded in New Delhi recently Sri Lanka Convention Bureau (SLCB) was recognised as the ‘Most Promising MICE Destination’.

The SLCB successfully participated at the BLTM exhibition held at Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, New Delhi from 29 to 30 September 2023.

BLTM is an exclusive two-day travel mart focused on business, leisure travel and MICE tourism. The event provided destination marketers and travel service providers an opportunity to meet and network with each other for fruitful business negotiations. 

BLTM is an annual event hosted in New Delhi, India.

This year, 24 local tour operators participated in the two day program.  SriLankan Airlines, the national carrier of Sri Lanka has also partnered with SLCB to promote Sri Lanka as a MICE destination. 

The SLCB, as a government enterprise functioning under the Ministry of Tourism and Lands, organised the participation at the BLTM as part of the Annual Marketing Plan 2023. 

The SLCB has been recognised as the partner country of BLTM 2023, and sponsored the Hosted Buyer visiting card holder.  The visiting card holder included SLCB branding and was distributed among the hosted buyers.  

India is a major market for Sri Lanka tourism focusing on business and leisure tourism with the highest number of arrivals.  As per the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, 170,247 tourists arrived from India during the period, January to August 2023 representing 22.4 % of total arrivals.  India is the number one source market for Sri Lanka for leisure, MICE and business tourism.   

SLCB General Manager Krishantha Fernando contributed at the Knowledge Session on  “MICE and Business Travel, Strategies and Tactics in a changing market dynamic held parallel to BLTM  2023. Fernando underlined the importance of the Indian tourism market for Sri Lanka, especially the MICE segment which has seen tremendous growth. 

“Indian MICE market is the largest for us and it has grown extremely rapidly in the post-pandemic era. We have been very proactive in this market and organised several events, including conducting road shows in several cities of India,’’ Fernando said. 

“We also organised the Sri Lanka MICE Expo 2023 earlier this year where almost 60 numbers of hosted buyers were from India. Going forward, we will maintain this high-level engagement with our Indian partners,’’ he added.

SLCB was supported by the Sri Lanka High Commission in New Delhi, India, to organise the event.  As per statistics, Sri Lanka had the biggest delegation of participation at the BLTM.