The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake
Ravi Karunanayake questioned the effectiveness of Sri Lanka’s tourism promotion strategy, noting inconsistent branding and limited international visibility, including the absence of Colombo from CNN weather coverage. He asked why funds collected from the formal hotel sector through the TDL/CESS, amounting to about Rs. 13 billion, were not being used more effectively for domestic and international marketing, and said industry stakeholders were concerned about a lack of clear direction from the Ministry.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 My second supplementary: Sri Lanka’s global marketing is inadequate; taglines keep changing. Even CNN’s weather this year did not mention Colombo. The industry is formalized, with hotels contributing to the TDL/CESS—about Rs. 13 billion. Why is this not used more effectively for promotion domestically and internationally? Industry says the Ministry is not providing clear direction.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 5 May 2026 ·No. 23546 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- 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/19711
Cite as: The Hon. Ravi Karunanayake. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 5 May 2026. No. 23546. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/19711