Sarath Wijesinghe President’s Counsel Sri Lanka, Solicitor in England and Wales, President Ambassador’s Forum UK/SL, and former Ambassador to UAE and Israel

Tourism is a Competitive trade

Tourism is competitive as it is the fastest and easiest to thrive with available resources the country is bestowed with naturally not everybody is lucky to possess. World is different and complex with different climatic, geographical, and difficult condition with some counties prune to natural disasters often and difficult weather conditions. Yet in the modern world all the countries and the  world over is contributing a substantial amounts to teh GDP of the nation led by USA, China, Mexico, France and many including Asian counterparts.

Small tourist nations

Napal is a landlocked poor country at the mercy of giant India for access and extreme cold weather close to Everest  Mountains Nepal makes use of for tourism making use of expeditions by those who climb the mountain as pleasure and challenges in life. Nepal is a hotspot on tourism also being the birth place of ‘’Gouthama Buddha’’ venerated by Buddhists worldover that also helps tourism in Nepal. Sandy UAE is not attractive or beautiful for tourists or tourism. They use sandy mountains for the enjoyment of tourists mainly during teh night, and after they are blessed with oil in 1960, diverted it to the tourist hotspot with most modern belongs, houses, shopping malls and making available for tourists and investors to invest with tax incentives, based on a vision by visionary leaders, showing vision is the main requirement to implement the mission with necessary adoptions to the system of governance and the culture and religious practices. Islam is a highly disciplined religion – yet in Dubai it is relaxed for tourist to flourish. Singapore once have been a barren land until a visionary leader imposed disciplined less corruption country to be the business, and a naval hub with advanced legal system as a centre for Arbitrations, by the vision of teh visionary took the nation with him to be a leading business hub with rich country with rich inhibitions once a poor island helplessly awaiting for help from the rest of the world. Maldives have no resources or income with no income expect dried fish to consume and export.Visionary leaders exploited sandy beaches, shallow sea water and the cluster of small islands to attract high end tourists to be a rich nation with full of tourists famous for tourism. These are not miracles, it is teh vision and sheer hard work with determined continuous efforts.India and China are industrial, and agricultural countries yet they concentre on tourism which co exists with tourism earning billions for the GDP and citizens with necessary environment protections and precaution on the protection of culture. Malesia is sensitive on ethnicity with three nations living shoulder to shoulder yet on the tourism sector they are a tourist country, making use of the climatic conditions, beauty,and natural resources balancing all areas and sectors. Thailand is a Buddhist country adopted themselves for tourism despite strong religious customs and ties tourists are attracted to Thailand for food, climatic condition, culture, friendly nature, sea and greenery and is a hotspot and a competitor for Sri Lanka due to many similarities. China attracts 50.6 million visitors and Sri Lanka is depending on Indian, Chinese, USA, UK, Germans, as positive customers patronising Sri Lanka in addition to Israel’s visiting for shallow sea surfing and trave, many others to visit historical and religisious places of significance including great history and water and irrigation systems of King of Sri Lankas giving priority to irrigation and construction of Dagobas and ‘Wevas’ that are massive removers of water connected to agricultures and agrarian services the western engineers to have praised for the knowledge of he engineers then.

Where is Sri Lanka positioned today?

Sri Lanka is positioned in the map of tourism as a tourist country with lot of beauty and the compact island, with excellent climatic conditions, network of roads connected to high ways, beauty greenery and scenery, reasonable good hotels, lacking in night life, Malls are being constructed, food prices not as low and reusable as before, political stability unlike sometime back with less crime rate and controlled bribery and corruption, and most importantly a reasonably disciplined community at least on election where free and fair elections help in a most peaceful and exemplary manner of European standard with no violence of any incidents hat had been the practice before.

Security and protection

Tourists are sensitive to security and protection from violence and incidents of this nature are rare on tourists and warnings by foreign embassies are not frequent. There is no tourist place but generally police and security forces have respect and attention for tourists.They move free with bit harassment from beggars, yet tolerated having got used to the way of life. Society is English spoken and consumer items and services are available to the tourists a the retail price with some unpleasant incidents of overcharging by errant traders. We remind the tourist authorities to re introduce tourist police to be active and to be seen to the tourist world watching us with teh microscopic eye. And take steps to protect whale population which is a rate treasure to us  without driving them away by lot of stress and disturbances.

Sri Lanka is in need of a vision and a visionary? Can  we expect  a vision and a visionary for tourism ?

Vision of  a leader is is granted to the nation by the visionary with great leadership, with dedication, hard work, understanding and research. Dubai leader we understand has studied and researched the achievements of Singapore, Israel and many other success stories before implementing his vision using the geographical situation, the nee found oil money, and the human factors by spending heavily to employ CEOs to most vent’s from the west including USA to manage app important hotspots. We need a leader with a vision and committed for the cause who is educated and researched the challenge, and it is to be considered whether we have one or some body or a group will put forward a vision by a visionary who has commitment and power to implement. Our citizen is intelligent and are in a position to judge and decide to themselves on the future and future challenges, programs and visionaries. The write is extropy pleased if the readers comment and come out with propositions ideas and share with the majority of the community of all races and languages and they are main barriers today, yet fortunately citizen is computer literate and digitally armed with a Mobil phone with  almost every citizen. Sarath Wijesinghe could be contacted on sararhdw28@gmail.com and you are requested to retrieve/read my articles by browsing the internet – digitalisation and tourism today on 27th nov and Lanka web number of other articles on the web against name of the author. Day Sri Lanka becoming the best destination is not too far if we work hard with a vision led by visionary leaders. Let us live on hopes but work hard non stop until we reach teh destination to be the best tourism hotspot in the world.