Leisure sector biggies among bidders for Kuchchaveli Tourism Zone

By Nizla Naizer

Tourism in the East is set to boom within the next year as big names in the industry including John Keells, Jetwing Hotels, Connaisance Group, Mount Lavinia Hotel and Lanka Sportreizen (LSR) have applied as prospective developers for the proposed Kuchchaveli Tourism Zone, north of Trincomalee.
Tourism Ministry Secretary George Michael explained that out of the 60 applications received by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority from the private sector, 40-50 of the best will be finalised today and the selected applicants will be invited to see the site and discuss plans in a crucial meeting this Friday (6).
“The meeting will take place in the Trincomalee Kachceri,” Michael explained, “It will be a decisive meeting with all the stakeholders in this project.”
The meeting on Friday will involve the selected applicants, representatives from Sri Lanka Tourism, Eastern Province Chief Minister, Land Commissioner, the Urban Development Authority (which formulated the conceptual design of the zone), Fisheries Ministry, Environment Ministry, the various utility boards and the Road Development Authority.
“All the stakeholders will be briefed on the project and we will outline our plan of action,” he explained. The 600 acre Kuchchaveli zone is expected to be a model tourist zone upon completion with carefully earmarked areas for infrastructure, recreation, leisure and domestic tourist needs. Construction is expected to begin in January 2010 and the zone is expected to be completed by 2011. The land border an 8 km stretch of white sand beach on the Eastern coast.
With 50 hotels expected in the zone, the 3000-5000 rooms created is expected to cost Rs. 1.5 million-2 million a room with over Rs. 600 million earmarked for additional infrastructure. 
He explained that the Kuchchaveli zone caters to the rising demand for good hotels in the East and will also be in line with the President’s vision to increase tourist arrivals to 2.5 million by that year.
The Kuchchaveli resort will also include other facilities to facilitate tourist related activities within the area and will provide a wide range of land and water based activities.
Meanwhile, the land will be allocated to hotels on a ten rooms per acre basis. Depending on the number of rooms the private sector enterprise wanted to build, SLTDA in coordination with Government Agent of Trincomalee and the Land Commissioner will allocate the land. The Bottom Line was told that this was a recently formulated guideline in line with the new Tourism Master Plan in order to promote sustainable tourism and leave plenty of room for nature and landscapes in the relevant project.
Sri Lanka Tourism will get a further boost as the Ministry launches the international television campaign on all major networks including CNN, BBC, Discovery, Al Jazeera and Travel and Living this month.
The campaign will urge foreign nationals to ‘Visit Sri Lanka 2011’ and will revolve around 60 second commercials run during strategic viewing hours. The campaign which will be officially kicked off today will run for twenty weeks.