{"id":87725,"date":"2019-04-26T14:37:26","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T21:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=87725"},"modified":"2019-04-26T14:38:01","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T21:38:01","slug":"sri-lanka-fears-up-to-1-5-billion-tourism-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/04\/26\/sri-lanka-fears-up-to-1-5-billion-tourism-losses\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka fears up to $1.5 billion tourism losses"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Adaderana<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Sri Lanka\u2019s tourism industry fears losing around $1.5 billion in revenue this year due to Sunday\u2019s attacks, the country\u2019s Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tourism will be the worst affected,\u201d Samaraweera told reporters in Colombo on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We expect a 30 percent drop in arrivals and that means a loss of about $1.5 billion in foreign exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u0db4\u0dca\u200d\u0dbb\u0dc4\u0dcf\u0dbb \u0dc4\u0dda\u0dad\u0dd4\u0dc0\u0dd9\u0db1\u0dca \u0dc3\u0d82\u0da0\u0dcf\u0dbb\u0d9a \u0d9a\u0dbb\u0dca\u0db8\u0dcf\u0db1\u0dca\u0dad\u0dba\u0da7 \u0d87\u0db8\u0dd9\u0dbb\u0dd2\u0d9a\u0dcf\u0db1\u0dd4 \u0da9\u0ddc\u0dbd\u0dbb\u0dca 1 5\u0d9a\u0dca \u0d85\u0dc4\u0dd2\u0db8\u0dd2 \u0dc0\u0dd3\u0db8\u0dda \u0d85\u0dc0\u0db0\u0dcf\u0db1\u0db8\u0d9a\u0dca\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/kzMjsV_jFIk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>He said the country could take up to two years to fully recover from Sunday\u2019s attacks, which devastated three luxury hotels and three Christian churches and killed 253 people killed, among them many foreigners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Typically, countries that suffer isolated IS-style attacks see tourism recovering within one-to-two years, as long as root causes are addressed and security measures taken are well communicated,\u201d the minister said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He pointed to Belgium, France, Spain and Tunisia as countries which recovered their tourism markets within a short time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Samaraweera said tourism was emerging as Sri Lanka\u2019s success story when Sunday\u00b4s blast shattered hopes of reaching a revenue of $5.0 billion, up from last year\u2019s $4.4 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Official figures show that tourist arrivals in the first quarter of this year jumped 4.6 percent to 740,600 from a year earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Samaraweera said he was hoping to unveil a package of concessions to help the tourism sector weather the impact of the suicide bombings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the deluxe hotels in Colombo have stepped up security and curtailed bookings amid fears of more attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><strong>-With Inputs From AFP<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Adaderana Sri Lanka\u2019s tourism industry fears losing around $1.5 billion in revenue this year due to Sunday\u2019s attacks, the country\u2019s Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera said. Tourism will be the worst affected,\u201d Samaraweera told reporters in Colombo on Friday. We expect a 30 percent drop in arrivals and that means a loss of about $1.5 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87725","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=87725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}