COLOMBO: Sri Lanka Tourism and SriLankan Airlines combined their strengths to bring down top British photographer and film maker Andrew Sutton to Sri Lanka to conduct a responsible whale watching workshop with a practical on the job training programme.
Andrew said “Our experienced estimates gave us a figure of around 350 whales though this figure was most likely higher toward 500″ which is unique to Sri Lanka making it a top 10 destination globally to attract the estimated market size of 13 million eco tourism enthusiast and 2 billion dollars in revenue if one really structures the market.”
The whale watching business is worth US$2 billion but unfortunately successive policy makers have not focused on the development of this market just like the cruise business, Sri Lanka Tourism Promotions Bureau Chairman Rohantha Athukorala said. Speaking at the Sri Lanka Tourism and SriLankan Airlines sponsored whale watching workshop Athukorala explained how the cruise travel business was currently bringing in visitors with almost 50,000 cruise passengers. Sri Lanka Tourism together with SLITO has now sketched a wayforward plan for the segment which include supply chain development which is infrastructure in nature and also a demand generation plan which can the industry to a hundred thousand travellers within two years if properly executed just like the many other products developed by the industry.
