Sri Lanka is enjoying nearly 600,000 tourists from across the globe for whom the industry has gone beyond beaches to Culture, Nature and Adventure positioning Sri Lanka as ‘a land like no other’.
Our MICE industry i.e. Meetings, Incentive Travel, Conferences and Exhibitions is recording 14% of the total visitor arrivals with Sri Lanka being identified as value for money and exotic destination. Sri Lanka offers all modern infrastructure facilities complimented by Conference and Exhibition Centres, International hotel chains and SriLankan Airlines, with regard to any international congress or exhibition. Sri Lanka has just hosted the Convention of the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) in September this year that brought in over 1500 delegates.
Sri Lanka is gifted with amazing diversity of attractions from beaches, ancient cities, sanctuaries for wildlife, to hill country tea plantations, literally within a few hours of each other. These are featured in pre and post tours of the events the visitors partake. Although well on the road to modernization, the country and its people still cherish most of their traditional values and take pride in their rich culture, an aspect, which continues to attract visitors from abroad.
Sri Lanka is first country in South Asia to move away from a state- centered economic structure and embrace a private sector led market oriented economy relaxing exchange controls and offering many incentives to foreign investors. Since then Free trade zones, repatriation of profit, widespread education, a sophisticated middle class and a newly emerging capital market, have made Sri Lanka an attractive economic hug in the region.
The Sri Lankan Convention Bureau is the national tourism organization which functions under the Ministry of Tourism and is responsible for the development and promotion of MICE tourism for Sri Lanka. The Bureau is working with 40 members consisting of Professional Conference and Exhibition orgnaisers, Destination Management Companies, Conference and Exhibition Centres, City and Resort Hotels, and Tour Operators who are trained professionals in the MICE industry.
