The Small Miracle – Sri Lanka !

National Geographic Traveler magazine has identified Sri Lanka among its top six destinations for world travelers in 2012, lauding the island nation’s heritage sites, exciting wildlife, lush landscapes, pristine beaches, unique cultural festivals & scrumptious food.

 Sri Lanka, a country with a recorded rich history of more than 2500 years has many heritage sites and has colonial historical architecture everywhere in the country since The Portuguese and Dutch once waged proxy wars here & by 1802 the island was a British colony.

It notes the successful conclusion of the most recent 30 years conflict, which eventually ended winning peace for the nation, has open doors for a greater economic development.

 Soon after the conflict ended Sri Lankan tourism has grown impressively, with a growth of 46% in 2010 followed by further growth of 30% in 2011.

With those increases, the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority has outlined a plan to reach a 45,000 hotel room capacity by 2016, when the total number of annual tourists is expected to reach 2.5 million. Special focus & effects are been put out to enhance the service quality 

Recently top hotel chains such as Sheraton, Marriott & Shangri La have announced plans for new investments in Sri Lanka. Currently approximately 2000 rooms have been shut for heavy refurbishments & renovations.

The virgin beaches of east cost of Sri Lanka are now blessed with quite a few developments of hotels reaching out to approximately 1000 rooms.

 Sri Lanka offers visitors a wide variety of unique venues, from broad white beaches to mountain vistas, wildlife parks teaming with elephants, leopards and more, rolling tea plantations, spas, adventure tourism, surfing and ancient UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

 With a trend setting for increase in tourism,  Sri Lanka has received a number of favorable travel reviews since 2010, Number of world renounced papers & magazines have rated Sri Lanka to be a promising tourist destination with New York times ranking as the number one place to visit in 2010.

By Dhanushka Wijeyekoon – Assistant Marketing Manager
NKAR Travels & Tours (Pvt) Ltd
Sri Lanka