SriLankan Airlines in a conjoined effort with the Sri Lanka Convention Bureau hosted a promotional event in Hyderabad to endorse the several facilities offered for hosting MICE activities in Sri Lanka. These efforts are focused toward implementing a long term plan to enhance Sri Lanka’s profile as a MICE destination and becoming a premier conference location in the Indian Ocean.
The country is emerging as one of the most exciting tourism and MICE destinations in Asia. Sri Lanka’s MICE industry experienced a leap forward in the last few years recording over 144,000 MICE visitors to the country in the year 2014 of which majority has emerged from the Incentive Travel segment. The total tourist arrivals into the country exceeded 1.5 million in 2014 from mere 500,000 in 2009.
Conference business has reached a new high with 62 International conferences recording in the year 2014. Among them are International Symposium on Water Resources and Renewable Development Asia -ASIA 2014, International Convention on Quality Control Circles -ICQCC 2014, 9th SAARC ENT Congress, World Blood Donor Day -WBDD2014, 7 World Youth Congress , 5 International Symposium on Water Resources and Renewable Development Asia -ASIA 2014. About 70 Internationally reputed conferences are scheduled to be held in 2015 from over 60 International conferences in 2014.
Despite rapid infrastructure development, Sri Lanka’s true strength is in the area of corporate meetings and Incentive Travel mainly because of the diverse locations in Sri Lanka. Within a few hours one can move from one location to another. For this reason, a large number of Indian Corporates have opted for Sri Lanka for their meetings. Among them are Paropkar group, Cadbury, Kaseya, Nokia, Omka, Mahendra & Mahendra, L’oreal , Sree Group, TMI group, Coca Cola , Philip, Epson , VVI , Canon and several others.
SriLankan Airlines offers its MICE passengers a host of privileges ranging from discounted airfares for guest speakers, resource personnel and delegates; promotional support services; meet and greet services; special recognition on-board; professional advice on event venues; ground operators and hotel accommodation as well as assistance and information at all SriLankan offices network-wide.
Currently, the airline flies out of seven markets from India, namely – New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kochi, Trivandrum and Tiruchirappalli. The airline has a total frequency of 86 flights per week flights between Sri Lanka and India, with the highest frequency being from the Chennai market, of 26 flights per week from. Thus it has great connectivity especially from South India for MICE travellers to Sri Lanka.
