Sixteen top international advertising firms have expressed their interest to promote Sri Lanka Tourism in the upcoming first-ever global destination marketing campaign. “Out of the 19 organisations that registered and collected Expressions of Interest, 16 top global communication companies have expressed their interest to partner the sought-after Sri Lanka Tourism global push to develop a new position as a destination,” Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau Chairman Rohantha Athukorala said.

The new campaign brief has been very carefully developed to give the opportunity for the best creative brains in the world to come up with a cutting edge campaign that can really unleash the true potential of Sri Lanka as a tourist destination. A nine-member high-powered Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC) headed by a senior official of the Ministry will go through the proposals.

Speaking at the graduation of the MBA Batch 2015 of University of Sri Jayewardenepura last week, Athukorala said Sri Lanka tourism is registering a 14.1% growth crossing the 830,000 visitor arrivals mark by the first half. However he said the full year target for 2015 is 1.8 million visitors and foreign exchange earnings of $ 3 billion. “We need to attract higher quality tourists given the diversified product range that Sri Lanka has that no other Asian island destinations can offer,” the SLTPB Chief added.

He said the upcoming global destination marketing campaign would be crucial.  “Sri Lanka tourism whilst focused on the ethos of building a strong tourist destination as a brand after a lapse of six years with a global partner will support the nation branding building agenda and not the other way round,” emphasised Athukorala.  “The global experience is that when the value of a country brand is strong, it has the potential to attract higher quality tourists, stronger export markets and high value investments,” he added.