Sri Lankan tourism authorities said a special program would be launched soon to attract around 150,000 tourists to the country during the next three months.

 

The move comes as a response to falling tourist arrivals, which dropped by 22 percent in November this year compared with the 2005 November figure of 48,457 arrivals, figures from the Ceylon Tourist Board showed.

 

Pratap Ramanujam, secretary to the Ministry of Tourism, said here Thursday that the program would target arrivals from UK, Germany, China, India and the Middle East with a series of high profile promotions.

 

The island's tourism industry, a major foreign exchange earner, has been hit by the escalation of the armed conflict with the Tamil Tiger rebels in the battle zones in the north and east provinces.

 

Industry officials said the arrivals from Britain had dropped by around 30 percent while a 40 percent drop had been experienced in the arrival of German tourists.

 

The government targeted 600,000 tourist arrivals in 2006 but the figure is expected to be little over 550,000. The adverse publicity received on the clashes in the separatist armed conflict has upset the winter bookings in the island. The hoteliers' association said that occupancy rates in most hotels fell below 50 percent.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 22, 2006)