{"id":140340,"date":"2024-02-08T17:44:56","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T00:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=140340"},"modified":"2024-02-08T17:46:49","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T00:46:49","slug":"tourism-can-save-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/02\/08\/tourism-can-save-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourism\u00a0 can save us"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By Garvin Karunaratne<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>I am quoting an earlier paper of mine which if considered can develop the sad state of tourism in our country.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The only addition I make is about the takeover of hotel bookings on the Internet by giant foreign companies that have also taken over advertising. Our tourist board authorities have to think very seriously about the fact that these foreign booking companies advise the payment by the tourist to the hotel- which happens in rupees, but the booking company sends an invoice for fifteen percent to the hotel which the hotelier takes to his bank and the bank pays that invoice in our dollars. In short, our country has lost the dollars from our reserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In my foreign travel, I have always paid for hotels in India, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand in dollars.\u00a0 The hotels take over our passports and immediately they see a foreign passport they insist on payment in dollars.\u00a0 Time to think deeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-lankaweb-com wp-block-embed-lankaweb-com\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"pvWP9gIuEX\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2013\/11\/17\/tourism-ideas-for-consideration-if-tourism-is-to-be-developed\/\">Tourism: Ideas for consideration if Tourism is to be developed<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;Tourism: Ideas for consideration if Tourism is to be developed&#8221; &#8212; LankaWeb.com\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2013\/11\/17\/tourism-ideas-for-consideration-if-tourism-is-to-be-developed\/embed\/#?secret=sDncyOoW6n#?secret=pvWP9gIuEX\" data-secret=\"pvWP9gIuEX\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Garvin Karunaratne I am quoting an earlier paper of mine which if considered can develop the sad state of tourism in our country.&nbsp; The only addition I make is about the takeover of hotel bookings on the Internet by giant foreign companies that have also taken over advertising. Our tourist board authorities have to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-garvin-karunaratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}