Terrorisation at a hillside resort

That the resort is popular to overseas visitors is borne out by the occupancy status on the ill-fated night: 24 foreign tourists including Sri Lankans, Americans and Europeans were staying overnight. Nestled in an idyllic spot with the Shangu river flowing at the foothill, the scenic beauty of the hill resort is breathtaking. Evidently, its scenic beauty merely would not have drawn that many tourists to the hillside establishment, if it were not run efficiently.

This perhaps could be show-cased as a private sector tour operators' success. There must be other examples. Private sector is a natural choice of a stimulus for the growth of tourism, but the government has to give the right kind of physical infrastructure, fiscal incentives and security support to let a thousand flowers bloom there. When private sector tour operators carve a niche among local and foreign visitors with innovative, recreational and cost-effective products, they are not just boosting tourism, they are also helping the image of the country. Indeed, by comparison with government-sponsored tourism they have a greater potential to succeed with all the networking and groundbreaking they can do in a globalising world.

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Incidentally, an event that went largely unreported related to botching up of some programmes for the new year's celebrations in a tourist resort town at the directive of the ministry concerned which was apparently prompted by some religion-based parties. Why was an intervention made to queer the pitch?

Tourism has become highly sensitive to any kind of negative signal, specially violence, in today's world. So, the best way for the government to promote it is to provide fool-proof security to tourist installations.