SRI LANKA on Wednesday (September 28) said it will throw out an existing on-arrival visa scheme for 76 countries in favor of an online application process, a move tourism operators criticised as an additional barrier to visitors.
Currently, visitors from 78 nations are granted visas when they land on the Indian Ocean island nation. Now, only visitors from Singapore and the Maldives will have that privilege, since they offer it to Sri Lankan citizens.
Sri Lanka’s Immigration and Emigration Department said the system would serve travelers efficiently while helping maintain national security. The government has yet to give an effective date for the programme, but it is expected in January.
“With this system, travelers of business, tourists and transit can apply online without visiting our missions abroad,” Immigration and Emigration Department Controller General Chulananda Perera told reporters. “We can reciprocate an on-arrival visa process if any other country wishes,” he said.
Sri Lankans often have a hard time obtaining foreign visas, given the spate of visa fraud, political asylum cases and general emigration prompted by a quarter-century civil war that ended in May 2009.
Emigration remains a big business – newspapers regularly carry ads promising help to obtain visas to first-world nations.
In the other direction, tourist arrivals into Sri Lanka have been booming since the war’s end with many visitors attracted by the relatively inexpensive cost and hassle-free travel.
However, tourism operators are concerned the new visa requirement will make it harder for tourists now starting to return in big numbers.
“Online visas will certainly be an additional barrier for tourists,” Sri Lanka Inbound Tour Operators Association president Nilmin Nanayakkara said. “So it has to be viewed negatively in that sense, and there will definitely be an impact.”
The government is targeting 2.5 million visitors a year and $2bn (£1.27bn) in revenue by 2016, banking on the island’s many attractions: tropical beaches, misty green hills, colonial-era tea estates, ancient temples and sites sacred to many religions.
However, analysts and tourism operators say Sri Lanka must boost its bed capacity and bring up its service levels to compete with nearby Maldives and Thailand, to sharply raise its numbers from the steady wartime levels.
Tourist arrivals in the first eight months of 2011 have jumped 35.2 per cent to 537,787, compared to the same period a year ago. Revenue rose 50 per cent in the first seven months to $451.4m (£288.03m) year-on-year.
