Sanath Ukwatte, chairman of the colonial-era Mount Lavinia hotel in Colombo, said he lost about 30 per cent of his bookings within days of the Easter Sunday attacks that killed 253 people.Many holidaymakers got the first plane out of Colombo after the blasts - at least 40 foreigners were among the dead - raising fears for a tourism industry that had managed to move on from the shadows of a decades-long civil war.
On Friday, European travel giant TUI announced it had stopped taking bookings for the South Asian country.And the crisis could get worse before it gets better for the island nation, whose palm-fringed beaches and mountain tea plantations were recently named the best place to visit in 2019 by the Lonely Planet guide.Sri Lanka's Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera had hoped tourism would earn a record US$5.0 billion this year, up from US$4.4 billion in 2018.
Ruchir Desai, a senior investment analyst with Asia Frontier Capital in Hong Kong, said the next year will be a tough one for Sri Lanka. With armed guards now a fixture in Colombo after the Easter bombings, holiday cancellations are flooding in AFP/LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI Finance Minister Samaraweera highlighted how other countries hit by Islamic State-inspired attacks rebuilt their image and convinced tourists to come back.
Danger is"a perception thing," said Campbell, who is now looking at redirecting bookings to rival destinations like Nepal.
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