Skift Take
It's understandable that Sri Lanka wants arrivals to return to pre-Easter bombing levels soonest. The challenge is knowing what measures are needed, amid the sense of urgency that can cloud the mind.
At what point does a destination struck by disaster ask online travel agencies to cut commissions when bookings aren’t at normal levels? Or resort to offering free tourism visas when the country could use the revenue to boost safety and security?
Sri Lanka is the latest study of a destination's crisis recovery. Ten years after a civil war ended, tourism has risen as a key engine of the nation’s economy, providing jobs for thousands of youths from rural areas including the northern and eastern parts of the island.
No wonder the country wants to rebuild the arrivals number as quickly as possible, as reported in our article below. In the context of protecting livelihoods, the need to devise strategies to attract specific markets is a luxury. Warm bodies must fill empty beds, and anybody will do.
But in this numbers game, some measures may be better than others. Rather
