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Only 2,500 tourists permitted daily

22 Jan 2021

By Dinitha Rathnayake   After reopening Sri Lanka’s borders for tourism yesterday (21), the Government has decided to limit tourist arrivals to 2,500 per day due to Covid-19-related capacity issues, The Morning learnt. Speaking to The Morning, Airport and Aviation Services (Sri Lanka) (Pvt.) Ltd. Director Shehan Sumanasekara said that the decision was taken considering the PCR testing capacity, the availability of hotels and tour guides, and restrictions at the country’s airports. However, there is a possibility of increasing this number according to the tourist arrivals and how the arrival capacity is handled at present, he noted. “At the moment, we have only limited the tourist arrivals and do not have any intention to limit the repatriation process where the total repatriation-related arrivals reported in a day were 207 and the total of such arrivals during the last nine months was 70,000. Yesterday (21), we received 13 flights including four cargo flights. With the country opening up for tourism yesterday, a few tourists arrived too,” Sumanasekara said. He further explained: “Airport staff is well set to handle the arrivals. We have around 4,300 staff members at the Mattala Airport in Hambantota, the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) in Katunayake, and the Colombo International Airport in Ratmalana, who are all well experienced to handle any crisis.” Only 10 of them tested positive for Covid-19 but it was not due to passenger handling, and instead contracted the virus from outside, said Sumanasekara. Safety measures are guaranteed 100%, Sumanasekara assured. According to Sumanasekara, this is the main reason that the Airports Council International (ACI) certified the BIA’s commitment to prioritising health and safety measures in accordance with the International Civil Aviation Organisation Council Aviation Recovery Task Force’s (ICAO CART) recommendations and in alignment with the ACI Aviation Business Restart and Recovery guidelines along with industry best practices. Sumanasekara further added that this certificate had been issued only for 190 airports from 1,200 airports in the world. When queried about the total income from the recent pilot project implemented in connection with bringing down Ukrainian tourists, Sumanasekara confirmed that it was a sum of Rs. 42 million within 18 days.  


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