Ministry of State facilitates getting tourism off the ground post-1977

Let us now return to’ my role in the newly created Ministry of State. The President and my new Minister Anandatissa de Alwis had a special interest in tourism. As Minister of State, JRJ had presented the Tourism Development Act to establish the Ceylon Tourist Board. He appointed his brother Harry as Chairman of the Tourist Board to signal its importance.

Anandatissa was his Permanent Secretary at that time. Mrs. Bandaranaike as PM had also promoted tourism during the 1965-1970 period and appointed Dharmasiri Senanayake as the Chairman of the Tourist Board. He was a dynamic leader and we inherited an outstanding staff who wanted to take tourism to a new level.

JRJ had appointed Chandra Soysa, an Accountant, as the Chairman. He had good connections with Germany which was a top target for getting tourists to Sri Lanka. The Managing Director was Thahir and his assistant was Nimalasiri de Silva who had left the diplomatic service to handle the Board’s public relations. We had three outstanding officials who had been recruited by Dharmasiri and had performed well to put Sri Lanka on the tourist map.

They were Samaradiwakara who supervised the European market while Lakshman Ratnapala, who had worked with me as a Press Officer, handled the American sector. Navaz was based in France and we accredited local agencies to represent us in Japan and India. What was significant was that tourism was driven by the private sector while the Board played a supporting role.

No five star hotels had come up in Colombo for almost a century. With the impending Non-Aligned Movement’s meeting in Colombo, the State Trading Corporation had financed the construction of a brand new five star hotel which was to be managed by the Oberoi Group of India. This was the Lanka Oberoi which was a state of the art hotel designed by a top American architectural Company.

The other was the ‘Colombo Inter Continental’ begun during the tenure of JRJ as Minister in 1965. The strategy of the Board was to develop Sri Lanka as a ‘sea, sand and sun’ destination that could compete on the mass tourism market. Unlike our competitors Bali and Thailand, as long haul destinations, we could offer wild life and culture as extra incentives.

Accordingly the Board had set up its first resort area in Bentota where land and all other facilities were offered on a ‘plug and play’ basis along the Bentota river and estuary, to both local and foreign investors. John Keells were the first to hire Geoffrey Bawa to redesign the old Bentota Rest House into the five star Bentota Beach Hotel it is today.

This started a trend which transformed Asian architecture and made Bawa a famous name among modern building circles. Aitken Spence followed with the Ahungalle hotel which has now been rebranded as Heritance Ahungalla. A Tea Company which owned Elephant House remodeled the old Hikkaduwa Rest House with a French architect but was not able to achieve the aesthetic excellence of a Bawa designed hotel.

Later it was sold to John Keells which was fast emerging as a leader in in-bound tourism. An amazing development then took place. Around our main destinations by the sea a large number of middle and small level hotels, restaurants, batik shops and grocery stores sprang up which opened up avenues of employment and income for local investors and workers.

Bawa’s preference for local Batiks, handicrafts, metal work and antiques for interior decoration led to the birth of flourishing small enterprises which later even supplied urban house builders. As I had served as an official in Galle and Kalutara districts I was able to iron out many practical problems that arose. For instance a major drag on investment was the pattern of land ownership in the south. Most of the private lands by the sea were so fragmented that nobody could get a clear title. Without a clear title local banks would not lend money for hotel construction.

For instance in the Balapitiya area there were more than two hundred ‘pangu’ holders for each small block of land. To make matters worse many of the share owners had migrated to Colombo. I particularly remember that the Ahungalle construction was halted due to this problem. After discussing with the Attorney General I arranged for the Tourist Board to acquire these lands and then transfer them with clean title to the investors.

The investor had to deposit the money in a state account to pay the claimants. This solution worked very well and banks were provided with clean titles which enabled them to speedily process loan applications. It also so happened that many of the officers who handled the tourist sector for the big companies were ex-planters who were displaced by the takeover of estates by Mrs. B’s government.

They were talented workaholics and I was able to move with them both officially and socially. Ken Balendra, `Roti’ Sivaratnam, G.C. Wickremasinghe, D. Perera, C.P. de Silva and George Ondaatje were the indefatigable pioneers of our modern tourist industry. We had links with the directors of TUI, Neckermann, Wintertour, Accor, Club Mediterranee and many other global travel agencies.

Accordingly hotels and shops sprang up along the southern coastline and tourism became one of our biggest money spinners in addition to beautifying many towns which were earlier in a shabby state. Bawa and his followers were trend setters in hotel architecture.

Hikkaduwa

While Bentota was a well-planned tourist resort, Hikkaduwa which was about 20 kilometers from there grew as a natural resort of a different model. From the earlier days Hikkaduwa with its coral reefs was a destination favoured by local travelers. Its Rest House was a favourite holiday destination of the Colombo elite led by R.G. Senanayake. With the expansion of tourism it developed as a low cost resort sought after by young western tourists.

This was a special time which saw the growth of ‘Flower Power’. It was the age of the Beatles, Maharishis, soft drugs and fancy hair and dress styles. It was the heyday of a counter culture and Hikkaduwa, like Goa and Kathmandu, were on the must visit list of young backpackers. As Secretary I would often visit Goa and Kathmandu and see the energy in this new market which fortunately our Tourist Board recognized and supported even though the Colombo elite was aghast.

In those days Royal Nepali Airlines was the only air link between Kathmandu and Colombo. Many tourists would visit the Himalayas and then come to Hikkaduwa for its blue sea waters. The flight was so full of stoned backpackers that we called it the ‘Ganja Express’. In spite of frequent spraying of perfumes the inside of the plane reeked of Ganja.

There is a great sequel to my experiences of Hikkaduwa and Unawatuna. Later in time when I worked for the UN I would visit many Ministries in Germany, France and the UK. The front desk would ask for my passport and when I produced my Sri Lankan passport there were so many compliments paid by the then three piece suited officials. The secret was that they had long ago visited Hikkaduwa as young hippies and had an enchanting time in our country.

They were models of middle class respectability now, but had not forgotten the good times they had by the sea at Hikkaduwa. Sri Lanka was entering the world tourism map at a fast clip.

International Kudos

With the dynamism shown by the Tourist Board and the local private sector, tourism in Sri Lanka improved by leaps and bounds. It is strange but true that at that time the -number of arrivals here were greater than the arrivals in India with all its attractions. The main reason was that internal air travel in India was costly and inefficient. It took days to go from one tourist site to another.

Travel Agents in India looked on our developments as a model which could be recommended to their Government. This was shown by the decision of the Indian Travel Agents Association to hold their annual general meeting in Colombo. The main organizer of this meeting, Sita Travels of India, told me that their idea was to showcase Sri Lankan progress in order to convince their Government to follow suit.

Accordingly Mr. Sharma the Indian Minister of Tourism was also present when our Minister Anandatissa delivered the keynote speech. Ananda was easily one of the best speakers in our time and he held the audience spellbound. Biki Oberoi of the Oberoi group, which then managed the Colombo Oberoi, seconded Ananda’s pitch for our tourism development plan and the Indian delegates, who spent another couple of days dining and wining in Colombo and loaded with goodies imported under our free economy, went back delighted. They wanted to influence their Minister to be more like his Sri Lankan counterpart. Sure enough India launched a concerted Tourism drive and is now one of the largest tourist destinations in the world.

London

This event was followed up by the Sri Lankan Exhibition held in the Commonwealth building in London. Our exhibition was a major event in the London events calendar. We exhibited arts, crafts, investment opportunities, hotels, tourism and many other aspects of our history and culture. It ran for about two weeks and had the backing of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Offices.

The Tourist board had its own promotional stalls and evening receptions with Kandyan and low country dancing. I managed to persuade Arthur Clarke to join our delegation and he gave a well-attended lecture in the Commonwealth lecture hall, on his experiences in Sri Lanka. He also gave numerous interviews and his well-known enthusiasm for his country of domicile gave a boost to the exhibition.

Our man in Europe, Samaradiwakara and our High Commissioner in the UK, Murthy combined with European Travel Agents to boost our image as a growing tourist destination. By this time we were recognized by the trade as a promising travel centre for long haul tourist traffic from Europe.

Another advantage of participating in the Sri Lanka exhibition was that we could negotiate with organizers of seasonal charter flights which would bring large contingents of tourists during the summer and winter.

This was a great success and the hotel and travel sector was delighted. But we had to fend off the objections of Air Lanka which found that the cheaper tickets and more accessible airports of the charters were eating into their revenue. But that was partly due to their own lethargy and the new developments promoted by us made them work harder and review their ticketing policies about which our own expatriates were complaining.

I negotiated with the charter carriers and persuaded them to block book some tickets on regular Air Lanka (AL) flights, which naturally delighted AL because they could show sales without working hard to win clients on their own steam. Fortunately at that time AL was represented by General Sepala Attygalle who understood the primary economic need to increase tourist traffic. That could not be sacrificed for an airline which, being state owned, was now intent on going on an employment spree from among the children of influential in Colombo.

After some time they began to look to the Treasury for subsidies. It was such a drain on the Treasury that we had to later negotiate a partnership with Emirates Airlines. Unfortunately it was terminated by a stupid politically motivated decision and the national airline again lapsed into near bankruptcy. The inefficient national airline and other state corporations are the bane of the Sri Lankan economy which is dragged down by them year after year.

The Taj Samudra

A major milestone in our tourism development was the building of the Taj Samudra Hotel. All our projections from the Board’s statistical division, which was headed by my university senior, H.M.S. Samaranayake, who later became Chairman of the Tourist Board, showed that India will be a major ‘catchment area’ for Sri Lankan tourism. This necessitated a series of follow up decisions to make it a reality.

Establishing Indian brands here was a first step. True enough Oberoi was in Colombo. But they were here on a management contract. Anyway at that time Taj with its flagship Taj Bombay, was the gold standard in the hospitality business. In the words of Biki Oberoi “We are streetwalkers; they are call girls”.

One day not long after the Travel Agents Colombo meeting a high level management group from Taj Bombay met me in office. They told me that their Directors had decided to expand their footprint to other countries and were thinking of Colombo as a first step. Up to now Taj Hotels had not moved out of India and they were exploring possibilities of coming to Sri Lanka because this country was promoting an open economy.

After further exchange of pleasantries they asked for a two acre block from the seven acres in Galle Face which were then occupied by the Fisheries Ministry, the state owned Samudra Hotel and a section of the Tourist Board. I knew that this block of seven acres was easily one of the best locations in South Asia because it faced the Galle face ‘maidan’ and a vast expanse of sea. On one side was the historic Galle Face Hotel and on the other was the old Parliament.

If it was cut up into small blocks as some businessmen were demanding, one of the best sites in Asia would be destroyed forever. The Taj representatives asked for two acres. I told them I would give them seven acres. They could hardly believe their ears because, as they told me later, if they asked for two acres from Indian bureaucrats they would invariably be given only one.

I then took my decision to Anandatissa who fully agreed with my thinking that it should be retained as one contiguous block. He asked me to inform the President and get his consent. I met JRJ and told him about my views. He asked me only one question – “Are they the Tatas?” When I said it was a Tata Group venture he immediately agreed. When the news of approval was conveyed to the Taj board they were so impressed by the speed of our decision making that they not only decided on Colombo but also commissioned the building of their best hotel save the BombayTaj in Sri Lanka.

A new company was set up with a 60:40 share ownership between the Taj group and Sri Lankan investors. the Indian Reserve Bank then put a spoke in the wheel. They refused the transfer of funds from India as they had stringent foreign exchange regulations. Normally that would have spelt the end of the project. But a way out was found by us by making a pitch for investment by Non Resident Indians [NRI] to whom the Taj name was magic.

We launched an advertising campaign for local investors through the stock exchange. The offer was oversubscribed and the construction work on the hotel began in no time. This was a fortuitous beginning because communal riots started in Colombo in 1983 and hotel building in the country was unfortunately curtailed.

We had plans for many more facilities as Sri Lanka was now getting global recognition as an attractive destination. There was to be a string of modern hotels along the coastline. Charles Correa, the famous Indian architect designed another city hotel along the Beira Lake to be managed by the Sheraton Group. John Keells had negotiated with an Italian travel company to build a state of the art sea side resort at Unawatuna.

All were abandoned due to the communal riots of 1983. During my stay in Paris I had promoted a major travel group to visit Sri Lanka and build a five star hotel. In July 1983 while the rioting was going on they called me from their hotel room saying that they could witness the mayhem on Galle road and were getting back to Paris that night itself.

After Taj we could not build hotels for a long time because potential investors, like my French friends, shied away. Our strategic decision to retain the seven acres as a block has ensured that we have a manicured garden in the Taj which has beautified the cityscape. The presence of the Taj Hotel is a powerful impetus for attracting tourists from India which is now our main catchment area.

As I now drive past the Galle road along the Galle Face green which has now seen the building of several five star hotels, I reminisce happily about how it all happened and how I helped in creating a green zone in the heart of Colombo. At that time there was not much agitation about the environment and the common sense of our authorities had prevailed. Indeed we can be proud that due to the planning of the Tourist Board at that time large swathes of our coastline have been retained and beautified by the larger hotels.

The country owes a debt of gratitude to Geoffrey Bawa and other architects who placed the environment in the centre of their hotel designs. It is our special legacy to Asian architecture. Similarly we should thank Arthur Clarke, Rodney Jonklaas, Mike Wilson and their associates for calling for the preservation of our marine heritage. For years they called for a stop to the illicit destruction of our coral reefs. Local politicians did not support those initiatives. But they paid a heavy price when the Tsunami lashed into the villages where the coral barrier had been excavated to make slaked lime.

Akurala village, close to where illicit coral mining was at its worst, disappeared forever. Unfortunately a south bound train passing Akurala was also washed away and hundreds of innocent travelers lost their lives. The situation was so bad that a special office with Registrars sent from Colombo had to be established in Akurala to issue emergency death certificates. Bodies were not found and certificates had to be issued on hearsay. Without hotels, the coral reefs, a national treasure, would have long gone with the complicity of ignorant local politicians and their party leaders.