December 16, 2013, (LBT) – A major tourism promotional campaign is planned in China through The Traval Channel beginning January next year. The agreement to that effect was signed on by Yan Yi, Director of The Travel Channel and Rumy Jauffer, Managing Director of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau on Saturday, December 14.

Sri Lanka Tourism welcomed the13-member group from China’s ‘The Travel Channel’, at the Bandaranaike International Airport, who arrived here to start work towards, promoting the Island aggressively in China via their channel.

The Chinese Travel Channel, with an audience of 650 million Chinese, will use a mix of both programmes and commercials to help promote Sri Lanka, which in otherwise would have cost a commercial value of a sum of Rs. 2,800 million.

Also present at the signing ceremony were M. L. A. M. Hizbullah, Deputy Minister of Economic Development; Ren Fanqing, Deputy Ambassador of China in Sri Lanka; Bhashwara Gunarathna, Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism and Dr D. S. Jayaweera, Director General of Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority.

With this agreement, the Travel Channel will broadcast 2,500 advertisement spots and over 500 minutes of feature programs and interviews about Sri Lanka during the whole of January 2013. Sri Lanka is the first country the Chinese Travel Channel has chosen to provide advertising exposure in year 2014.

Parallel to these programmes The Travel Channel of China will also distribute the Sri Lankan content via six of its online sites and other social media tools which reaches an audience of nearly 350 million Chinese.

The 13-member TV crew will visit places such as Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Yala, Negombo, Pinnawala, Kandy, Nuwara-Eliya, Ratnapura, Down south, Sigiriya, Pasikudah, etc. during their seven-day stay in Sri Lanka to film the Island’s tourism attractions.

Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau is arranging the Travel Channel’s tour in Sri Lanka with the support of The Hoteliers’ Association of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Association of Inbound Travel Operators and also the SriLankan Airlines. As a national career of Sri Lanka, SriLankan Airlines will also get the chance to advertise through these programmes.

Sri Lanka in recent years has been aggressively promoting the country in the Chinese market under the guidance of the Minister of Economic Development Basil Rajapaksa. Apart from the Travel Channel promotion campaign, it will also continue with the 3-Day Mega Promotional campaign which will be held in the Chinese city of Shanghai. During the year 2013 a 3-day campaign was conducted in Beijing, while a 200-buses branding promotional campaign also was carried out in major Chinese cities for a period of six months.

Sri Lanka is also planning to take part in five international travel fairs and organize familiarization tours for around 200 foreign journalists and tour operators during year 2014. China ranks among the top ten countries from which Sri Lanka received the highest number of tourists during year 2013.

Source : http://www.lbt.lk/news/business/6028-major-tourism-promo-for-lanka-in-china-travel-channel