• Dietmar Doring states warnings to ‘tremendously’ impact first time travellers

Sri Lanka is to experience a reduced demand from first-time travellers from Germany due to the alleged “travel warnings” issued by the Foreign Ministry of Germany, The Daily Morning Business learned. 

Speaking to the Daily Morning Business on Sunday (2), Dr. Dietmar Doring, Head of Asian-German Sports Exchange Programme Research (AGSEP Research), a research institute in respect of Sri Lanka tourism development stated: “These caution notices have a tremendous impact on first time travellers. There is a grave difference between the situation in Sri Lanka and what is being publicised. The travel and tour operators of  Germany who are located in foreign countries, they only experience reduced demand for Sri Lanka.”

Therefore, German travellers prefer to travel to countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, or Vietnam. The travel and tour operators do not have an issue in the reduced demand as there are other destinations, he added. He also pointed out that in 2019, when Vietnam witnessed 18 billion tourist arrivals, Sri Lanka only witnessed 2.3 billion.    

Speaking about a group of few first-time travellers to Sri Lanka who happened to leave the island yesterday, Dr. Doring said that since they have studied these notices published by the German Foreign Ministry, they were worried. There were details on theft – even in the hotel rooms – and travellers experiencing sexual harassment while there was no reference of figures in terms of number of crimes. The German tourists who have come to Sri Lanka during the last couple of weeks are surprised as they have experienced the opposite.   

He reiterated: “These are generalised notices, without any reference for data and that is what we (AGSEP Research) criticise,” while the daily powercut and shortage of essential food items-related information are carried forward without update. 

When The Daily Morning Business inquired whether this had already been communicated to the Embassy of Germany in Sri Lanka and the response of the Embassy in this regard, Dr. Doring said: “They know about it, we have written to the Ambassador and we received no reply.”    

In the press conference held on 31 March in this regard, at the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management (SLITHM) President of the Berlin Table Tennis Club Roland Zitzmann said: “We arrived on 12 and 13 of March, we got a message through an online service that there is curfew in Sri Lanka. I travelled for three weeks through the country. But we did not experience any emergency situation in the country.”