{"id":87067,"date":"2019-04-08T17:15:41","date_gmt":"2019-04-09T00:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=87067"},"modified":"2019-04-08T17:17:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-09T00:17:11","slug":"sri-lanka-rolls-out-free-visa-on-arrival-for-uk-tourists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/04\/08\/sri-lanka-rolls-out-free-visa-on-arrival-for-uk-tourists\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka rolls out free visa on arrival for UK tourists"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy\u00a0 travelmole.com<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>\n\nSri Lanka is to offer free visas on arrival to tourists from the UK and 30 other countries from next month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/admin.travelmole.com\/images\/stories\/2009\/images\/sri-lanka-2455695_640(1).jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The country&#8217;s tourist office is hoping to build on a good performance for March, when visitor numbers increased by 5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The free visa period will operate for six months from May 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Free visa entry will be granted to nationals of the UK, the EU, the US, Australia, South Korea, Canada, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and New Zealand.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tourism development minister John Amaratunga said: &#8220;We will start granting a six-month free visa period from 1 May for selected countries during our lean period to boost tourist arrivals,&#8221; said tourism development minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;As the next step of this programme, we are planning on setting up a permanent system at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) to issue visa on-arrival, like in many other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;We believe this would be a major breakthrough in attracting more visitors,&#8221; the minister added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The free-visa system may be expanded to include major market China and could be extended permanently depending on its success over the six-month period.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy\u00a0 travelmole.com Sri Lanka is to offer free visas on arrival to tourists from the UK and 30 other countries from next month. The country&#8217;s tourist office is hoping to build on a good performance for March, when visitor numbers increased by 5%. The free visa period will operate for six months from May 1. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87067","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=87067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}