Sri Lanka’s tourism authorities to make fresh allocations for marketing campaign to capitalise on Lonely Planet’s rating
Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB) has decided to make a fresh allocation of US$ 350,000 for a marketing campaign to be launched from January next year to capitalise on Lonely Planet’s rating of Sri Lanka as the number one country in the world to visit in 2019, the local media has reported.
“We are planning to roll out a fresh marketing campaign with an investment of US$ 350,000 on Lonely Planet’s media platforms from January onwards for a period of three months,” SLTPB Managing Director Sutheash Balasubramanium has told journalists.
He has reportedly said the campaign would go on all Lonely Planet media platforms, including electronic, print, website and social media platforms.
“Lonely Planet has a tremendous reach and the right positioning. We are leveraging on this ‘Best in Travel’ announcement because it goes up until end 2019. So we can really use this opportunity to increase our brand visibility to gain greater profile and traction with international tourism trade and media,” he has added.
According to Balasubramanium, this was an additional budget SLTPB had to allocate for this year’s tourism promotion.
“The Lonely Planet campaign was something that was unexpected. The investment is a combination of Tourism Development Levy (TDL) funds, Embarkation Tax and a mix of all other funding sources,” he has said.
Further, it was pointed out that SLTPB hoped to include the Lonely Planet promotion campaign in its other campaigns in the near future.
“The brand identity campaign is now set to get off ground and will be launched on 5 November at the World Travel Mart (WTM) in London. J. Walter Thompson (JWT) is doing the first phase which is the brand promotion and we will soon call for tenders for the second phase,” he has added.
OSL take:
The Sri Lankan government’s move to launch a marketing campaign to capitalize on the Lonely Planet ranking of the island nation would result in attracting new tourism markets to the island nation. It would propel the further growth of the tourism sector making it a hotbed for foreign investments.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/20181029/Z_3 |