The Sri Lankan tourism sector may lose up to $1.5 billion in earnings this year due to the Easter Sunday bombings that hit hotels and churches throughout the country and left over 350 people dead, including over 30 foreign nationals, Sanath Ukwatte, the president of the Sri Lankan Hotel Association, said on Thursday
NEW DELHI (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th April, 2019) The Sri Lankan tourism sector may lose up to $1.5 billion in earnings this year due to the Easter Sunday bombings that hit hotels and churches throughout the country and left over 350 people dead, including over 30 foreign nationals, Sanath Ukwatte, the president of the Sri Lankan Hotel Association, said on Thursday."This is the first-ever time the terrorists have targeted and attacked tourists, particularly hotels. From the immediate reactions, we are estimating that there will be a massive loss of $1.5 billion in tourism earnings this year," Ukwatte told the Daily Financial Times news outlet.
Ukwatte noted that after terrorist attacks in Belgium, Egypt and Turkey, the tourism industries, as well as the economies as a whole, of those countries had suffered significantly.
The hotel association president said that Sri Lanka's government needed to focus on convincing the rest of the world that all of the hotels and tourist destination spots in the country remained under close watch by security forces and were protected against future terrorist attacks.
"We are unable to provide any statistics as yet on the cancellations of hotel reservations, but it's on the rise," Ukwatte said.
On Easter Sunday, Sri Lanka was shaken by a series of coordinated attacks that left 359 people dead and over 500 injured nationwide. These attacks, which targeted churches and luxury hotels, were the worst the country has faced since the end of its 25-year-old civil war in 2009. The Islamic State terrorist group (banned in Russia) reportedly claimed responsibility for the attacks on Tuesday, while Sri Lanka has implicated a splinter group off a little-known regional National Thowheed Jamath terrorist group to be behind the attacks.
Sri Lanka launched a criminal investigation immediately after the attacks, having already arrested over 100 suspects. Interpol announced on Monday that it would deploy a special team with expertise in crime scene examination, explosives and counterterrorism to Sri Lanka to investigate the attacks.
