Sri Lanka to revive and develop health tourism
Published On: September 12, 2009, 7:03 am
By Aparna Ganguli
By Aparna Ganguli
The 30-year war between the Sri Lanka government and the Tamil Tigers ended in May this year which has made the Sri Lankan government to look into the revival of tourism in the country. One of the prominent hotel firms in Sri Lanka, Aitken Space Hotels will partner with Six Senses Spa to develop a market resort in the in Beruwalla near Ahungalla. Malin Hapugoda, the Managing Director of the Aitken Spence Hotels confirms that. The project had had talks before was shelved due to the war.
Aitken Spence Hotels is now into developing health and wellness hotels by exploiting further opportunities in the sector. And for that it has rightly chosen Six Senses because it is an international spa developer. Aitken Spence has already partnered with Six Senses to manage spas at the Heritance Kandalama hotel and the Tea factory which are hotels run by Aitken Spencer. This new project would be Evason Hideaway, Ahungalla, which are beach spas and stilt villas on the private islands on the Madhu Ganga River.
All that sounds interesting. MD, Aitken Spence talks of health tourism as the fastest growing thing in the tourism sector. He talks of transforming the Neptune Hotel into an ayurveda, meditation and yoga hotel. They plan to expand this into projects especially in Europe. Rates at Neptune would be higher when opened.
The health tourism sector in Sri Lanka is growing to be popular day by day. President Mahinda Rajapaksa stresses on the opening of more hotels in Sri Lanka and also to increase the number of tourists every year to at least 2.5 million. Tourism investments are there from Japan and the focus is mainly on China now.
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