{"id":85915,"date":"2019-02-27T13:18:54","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T20:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=85915"},"modified":"2019-02-27T13:18:54","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T20:18:54","slug":"free-visa-for-tourists-from-selected-countries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/02\/27\/free-visa-for-tourists-from-selected-countries\/","title":{"rendered":"Free visa for tourists from selected countries"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Sri Lanka plans to issue free visa for several selected countries in a bid to attract tourists while this proposal has received Cabinet approval.<\/p>\n<p>The government says that it has been observed that there is a significant drop in tourist arrivals during the period from April to October compared to other months of the year.<\/p>\n<p>However, Sri Lanka is planning on attracting more Buddhist tourists as there are a host of religious and cultural events such as Vesak and Poson festivals as well as Esala Perahera during the period from May to August.<\/p>\n<p>Buddhist countries such as Thailand use a similar method in order to attract Buddhist tourists, the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>Considering this situation, it was proposed to issue visas free of charge for tourists from Thailand for a period of 6 months from April 01, 2019 aimed at increasing the number of arrivals within this period.<\/p>\n<p>Minister of Tourism Development, Wildlife and Christian Religious Affairs John Amaratunga had presented a proposal to also provide this facility to tourists from countries of the EU, the UK, Australia, South Korea, Canada, USA, Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p>The proposal has been granted approval by the Cabinet of Ministers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana Sri Lanka plans to issue free visa for several selected countries in a bid to attract tourists while this proposal has received Cabinet approval. The government says that it has been observed that there is a significant drop in tourist arrivals during the period from April to October compared to other months of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85915","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=85915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}