Sri Lanka post-war tourism is booming. In the first half of this year, a total of 452,867 people including 85,000 from India, visited the island nation, government data shows.

Sri Lanka has opened its gates to the tourism sector and the aviation sector as well.

It is evident with a sense of optimism, that the country is upgrading the infrastructure after the end of the war and this has produced productive results,” he added.

“To develop the industry, it is important to improve its infrastructure facilities and we have observed that the government’s future plans in this area were fruitful.

The construction of highways and the road network would also spur the industry,” he predicted, adding that the Mattala Airport which was under construction, would also help the tourism industry as the country still depended solely on the Colombo Airport.

Countries having more international airports were an added facility to the tourism industry.

In particular, flights to Sri Lanka, flights to Colombo would hopefully be among the fastest growing markets for international passenger traffic and the Mattala Airport too would cater to this increased passenger traffic,” he stated.

“The post-war scenario has brought many positive things to the country and had created the potential for both leisure and business to increase tremendously. Therefore, this situation should be capitalized for the countries for benefit towards making Sri Lanka more financially stable,” he said.

“SriLanka Airlines being accepted as the Oneworld Alliance at the IATA’s 2012 World Air Transport Summit, the SriLankan Airline was working very cooperatively and deserved to be awarded the Oneworld theme as it provided a high-quality service to its travellers.” As Sri Lanka’s economy continues to grow fast, the need for more airports could bring in more flights with less difficulty, which was very essential as more tourists are now booking flights to Colombo.

Cathay Pacific too was highly delighted in assisting Sri Lankan Airlines to join hands, being the best airline partners in the world,” he said.