Sri Lanka Tourism, recently announced their plans to develop a ‘city tourism’ strategy to position Colombo as a tourism hub in South Asia. The ‘City Tourism’ (“Urban Tourism”) strategy will also focus on developing and enabling Colombo to host high quality international events – that are globally proven to be a successful in City Marketing and Branding.

At present Colombo has a 4,000 five-star room inventory, while the completion of Port City is expected to make a further contribution to the five-star room inventory, along with state-of-the-art convention and entertainment facilities. Furthermore, Colombo is also expected to have 1.5 million sq.ft of leasable mall space by 2022. With a large proportion of much needed infrastructure, facilities and amenities in place throughout Colombo to cater to ‘City Tourism’, the development of a strategic approach to capture and enhance this offering for a global market is considered to be the logical next phase.

Under prevailing conditions, whilst global family entertainment has experienced a decline, according to market trends this segment is on its way to recovery and is likely to result in them opting for more entertainment experiences than ever before. With fewer options in the Asian region, Colombo is expected to soon be able to fill this market gap, as the preferred ‘City Tourism’ destination in Asia.

-Ada Derana