The Paper's reporter Qian Chengxi
On July 6, Sri Lanka's Minister of Tourism, Fernando, announced at a press conference that Sri Lanka would hold roadshows in five major cities in India in the near future to attract tourists from this traditional source neighbor to Sri Lanka and bring more foreign exchange to Sri Lanka.
At this time, Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in seven decades. The government ran out of foreign exchange, there was a shortage of oil and food, and the country was at a standstill. Inflation in the country reached a record 54.6% in June and is expected to rise to 70% in the coming months. Many Sri Lankans fled in despair. Sri Lanka's president has declared the country bankrupt. Just three days after the launch, thousands of protesters stormed the Sri Lankan presidential palace, pushing the chaos at home to a climax.
Sri Lankan protesters stormed the presidential palace
Experts believe that a series of poor economic policies pursued by the Sri Lankan government, coupled with a sharp decline in tourism revenues and a sharp decline in foreign exchange earnings caused by the epidemic, eventually led to Sri Lanka to where it is today.
The collapse of the economic pillar
Misty hills, beaches and ancient cities have made Sri Lanka a prestigious holiday destination in South Asia. Over the years, tourism has gradually become an important industry in Sri Lanka, creating a large number of jobs and becoming the third largest source of foreign exchange earnings in Sri Lanka. Especially after 2010, Sri Lanka's tourism revenue climbed from US$576 million in 2010 to US$4.381 billion in 2018, directly contributing 5.6% of the country's GDP. In 2019, 403,000 people across Sri Lanka worked directly or indirectly in the tourism industry.
Lion Rock is one of Sri Lanka's renowned attractions
However, in April 2019, a serial bombing occurred in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. A spate of terrorist attacks killed 250 people, 42 of them foreigners, leading many countries to issue travel warnings and large numbers of tourists to leave Sri Lanka. Statistics show that the number of tourists in May and June fell by more than 70% and more than 60%, respectively, compared with the same period last year. Sri Lanka's tourism revenue also slipped to $3.6 billion in 2019.
The ensuing COVID-19 pandemic has plunged Sri Lanka's tourism industry to the bottom in 2020, with almost no foreign tourists after March 2020, with tourism revenue of only $680 million that year.
Tourism has been reborn and difficult
Sri Lanka hopes that tourism can gradually recover in 2022. Since 2021, Sri Lanka has gradually relaxed travel restrictions, and on February 17, 2022, Sri Lanka became the first Asian country to resume the travel visa-on-arrival policy. At present, tourists who have received more than two doses of vaccines do not need to be isolated or tested for nucleic acid testing in Sri Lanka, and even tourists who have not been vaccinated can be released by a nucleic acid test on arrival without isolation.
Under such a relaxed policy, the number of tourists entering Sri Lanka exceeded 100,000 for the first time in two years in March this year, which is already higher than the number of tourists in 2021. In the first five months of 2022, a total of 60,000 Indian tourists visited Sri Lanka, and India became the largest tourist source in Sri Lanka in the first half of the year. That's why Sri Lanka's Ministry of Tourism is planning a roadshow in India. Tourism Ministry officials expect the roadshows to attract both business and leisure tourists, as well as to promote Sri Lanka as a wedding venue.
Fernando said he expects Sri Lanka to attract 1 million visitors by the end of the year.
A staff member in protective clothing checks at the airport
But the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict has cast a shadow over the recovery of Sri Lanka's tourism industry. After Sri Lanka opened its borders in 2021, tourists from Ukraine became one of the first international tourists to visit Sri Lanka. Nearly 20,000 tourists from Russia and Ukraine travelled to Sri Lanka in January 2022, accounting for more than a quarter of all tourists, and was expected to be the largest tourism market this year. M. Shanthikuma, president of the Sri Lanka Hotel Association, told Bloomberg in an interview, "Since the outbreak, Central and Eastern Europe has been a major source of foreign tourists in Sri Lanka, especially from Ukraine and Russia... Obviously, now they're not coming. ”
The deadliest blow came from the turmoil caused by Sri Lanka's own economic crisis. Due to the lack of fuel, the long line of vehicles in front of gas stations, which is common in Sri Lanka, will make tourists retreat. The ubiquitous protest marches and blocked roads will also make it extremely inconvenient for tourists to travel.
On the seashore in Galle, tourists pass by two military policemen
Located on the shores of the Indian Ocean, Galle is an ancient city built by the Portuguese for more than 400 years, listed as a World Heritage Site and once sri Lanka's most popular holiday destination. But now, due to the power outage, tourists have to turn their flashlights to find a way in the pitch-black old city. In a Reuters report in April, Galle's dream of returning to his pre-pandemic prosperity destination had been dashed.
Residents lined up in long lines, waiting to refuel
Can technology bring hope?
However, high-tech concepts such as virtual technology have brought hope to some tourism practitioners.
Virtual tours combine augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) to provide a travel experience that doesn't require an actual trip to a certain place. Since the pandemic, virtual travel has exploded around the world, with Airbnb adding online experiences around the world, with users being able to see the Northern Lights in Iceland or attend cooking classes in Jaipur, and some tourist offices have also used virtual technology to promote regional travel.
In Sri Lanka, Dhanula Jayasinghe, a tour guide at leopard trails, lost his job in the early days of the outbreak. Soon, he discovered that it was possible to provide a guided tour for people in another way. In May 2020, he began a virtual leopard viewing tour on Airbnb for $14 per person and $100 for 10 people. He uses ZOOM to share leopard videos, telling stories and knowledge about leopards. "It was a big challenge at first, but I'm used to it." To date, he has conducted nearly 600 online safaris.
Airbnb on Dhanula Jayasinghe's page
In May 2020, Foozoo Mantra, a homestay in Colombo, started an online store selling local healthy ingredients, which it has now sold to the United States. In December 2021, Shenuka Hapugoda, an IT consultant living in Colombo, launched BA.LA.MU, a mobile app that provides audio and maps of popular attractions, and it is also Sri Lanka's first and hottest travel audio guide app.
BA.LA.MU means "to see" in the local language. Open the app and you'll see ten of Sri Lanka's most popular attractions, enjoy high-definition pictures, follow the map, and listen to the informative audio guide.
Jayasinghe said tourists still prefer to travel in person since travel restrictions around the world were relaxed, but virtual experiences are still popular as a team-building event for companies. Because people can take advantage of the opportunity to relax, make small talk, and the online leopard tour only takes an hour, it's a good time for both him and the customer.
However, the power problem and network paralysis caused by the economic crisis are becoming more and more serious, and whether virtual travel can be sustainable in Sri Lanka in the future still has to be questioned.
Editor-in-Charge: Ying Xu
Proofreader: Yan Zhang