Hon. Dilith Jayaweera
Hon. Dilith Jayaweera said tourism earnings remain low despite high domestic costs, noting that average room rates are still over 20 percent below pre-Easter 2019 levels and that some Colombo five-star rates may amount to a net loss for the country. He proposed using Tourism Development Levy revenues for stronger nation branding and global promotional campaigns to attract higher-spending tourists and better position Sri Lanka against competing destinations.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Minister, thank you for the reply. The purpose of my Questions was not only discrete answers but a broader response. The core issue is that tourism earnings appear low relative to domestic costs. As you acknowledged, average room rates today are more than 20 percent lower than pre-Easter 2019 levels. Five-star room rates in Colombo, as you know, suggest a net loss to the country. However, we appreciate that the Tourism Development Levy has collected significant funds. Our sincere proposal: only strong nation branding and a robust global campaign can attract higher-spending tourists versus competing destinations. We propose using TDL revenues for quality branding and campaigns to position Sri Lanka strongly worldwide.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Thursday, 18 December 2025 ·No. 23062 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
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/lk/speeches/16747
Cite as: Hon. Dilith Jayaweera. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 18 December 2025. No. 23062. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/16747