Published on : Monday, April 22, 2019
A tweet posted on the travel booking website First Choice captured the trepidation among holidaymakers, while some airlines and travel agents said they would waive cancellation charges for people scheduled to travel imminently.
Others set to travel said they would not to be cowed into cancelling.
Named by the Lonely Planet guide for independent travellers as the best country to visit in 2019, Sri Lanka had rebuilt its image as a tropical paradise after crushing a long-running separatist insurgency by ethnic minority Tamils a decade ago.
Arrivals of 2.3 million last year were up by more than 400 percent on 2009 levels, according Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority data.
But the suicide bombers who killed at least 290 people, including 32 foreigners, and wounded 500 have in all likelihood ended the boom in tourism for some time.
Denmark’s richest man, Anders Holch Povlsen, and his wife lost three of their four children in a blast at one of the hotels. A British mother and son were killed at a breakfast buffet and two Australians were also among the dead.
Tourists were also arriving but many said they would steer clear of the capital.
Tourism was Sri Lanka’s third largest and fastest growing source of foreign currency, after private remittances and textile and garment exports, accounting for almost $4.4 billion or 4.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018.
“The attacks will not only impact already weak economic activity (real GDP growth was at a 17-year low of 3.2 per cent in 2018), but also the country’s relatively vulnerable external liquidity position,” Citi Asia Economics said in a note that warned the hardest blow would fall on tourism.
A U.S. State Department travel advisory warned of the danger of “terrorist groups” plotting more attacks. Targets could include tourist locations, transport hubs, shopping malls, hotels, places of worship and airports.
Other governments, including Japan and Australia, have also cautioned citizens planning travel to Sri Lanka.
JTB, Japan’s largest travel agency, has waived cancellation charges, and modified its package tours leaving Japan before May 10 to avoid risky locations, like Colombo, and will decide later on tours leaving after May 11, a spokeswoman said.
Two major airlines in neighbouring India, state-owned Air India and the largest carrier Indigo, owned by Interglobe Aviation, said they would waive rescheduling and cancellation charges for travel scheduled before April 24.
India was the single largest source of visitors last year, with 425,000, while 266,000 came from China, Sri Lanka’s newfound friend, and more than 254,000 from old colonial power Britain.
There were no immediate cancellations on Indian online booking portal yatra.com, but new inquiries and bookings had slowed, said chief operating officer Sharat Dhall.
Sri Lanks’s latest tourism campaign celebrates the island’s charms with the simple slogan ‘So Sri Lanka’.
At Colombo airport, departing holidaymakers were relieved to be getting out.