Out of the Box 7 - Getting it right for Sri Lanka

by Renton de Alwis

I wrote this column for the FT, Sri Lanka in mid-February 2010, to celebrate the contribution made by lesser known people and the huge contribution they make to Sri Lanka Tourism. I repost it today, once again as a tribute to the likes of Mr. Kuttan with a view of focussing on the need to give them and their work due recognition within the body institution of our tourism..

This week a most unique event happened in tourism in Sri Lanka. The Galle Face Hotel’s doorman par excellence; K Chattu Kuttan turned 90. More significantly for the travel and tourism industry, he celebrated 70 years on the job, almost half of the hotel’s 146 years. He, as part of the history of this venerated hotel, has perhaps greeted and served more of the world’s celebraties than anyone else we know, still living and working. Leaders of nations, literarary giants, movie stars and other rich and famous had the benefit of this man’s attention and care, and so were the early morning Colombo joggers who came over for breakfast and a chit-chat and several generations of chauffers and drivers who stopped by to drop-off guests at the hotel’s doorstep.

I remember how in early 1990’s, the legendary Asian grand dame hotelier Jenny Chua, the then general manager of the 172 year old Raffles Hotel in Singapore was adjudged the ‘World’s Hotelier of the Year’. Her award was presented at a pretigeous event, in the midst of the cream of the world’s hospitality industry, in New York. When this pinnacle award was announced and Chua was to be the first woman ever to have been bestowed with it, to the surprise of all in the audience, a tuban-clad tall Singaporean-Indian gentleman in his colourful regalia emerged on stage. It was only a few moments later that the petite Jennie Chua walked up on stage. In her acceptance speech, she explained that it was the likes of this gentleman; the doorman and the other members of her team, visible and invisible to the guest, that enabled her to make the mark to win such award.

A lesson indeed it was for many, in this great industry of ours. What makes tourism tick at a destination, as a unique human activity, is for sure not the large hotels, resorts, theme parks, and shopping complexes it builds or the glitter and the glamour of the night-life and the glitzy offers made to attract visitors. While those form some part of the equation, the greater part is about, the feel, emotion, caring and the service excellence it presents.

Sri Lanka as a tourism destination, which has a unique blend of a diverse nature, culture, heritage offer and a warm and friendly people, needs to get her positioning right. The theories we hear of meeting customer demand (based on what was in the past), with offers of more and more of the glitz may not be the way forward for a destination so blessed with riches, like Sri Lanka. That is, if we were to focus on ensuring the sustainability of the tourism industry and to present ourselves as a unique destination, away from that of many others that offer much of the same. In my mind, we are placed in a vantage position to shape a new model for the tourism world at large, much like Costa Rica, Bali (Sanur, Ubud) or Chiang Rai did in the recent past.   

Destinations that seek the many millions of visitors and have little to offer in terms of diversity, must not be taken as examples of the way forward for us. In this recovery stage of our industry from the thirty year lows, it is only natural that we want to make it back, rapid and fast. As was pointed out in an earlier column of mine, we may want to look at the demand of the many millions, limiting their experiences to one or two large ‘resort’ areas but not have the millions roaming all over this beautiful land of ours. What our home-stays and the community tourism initiatives should be catering to, is the demand at the upper end of the spectrum.

To do this, we need to get away from the mindset of treating the SMEs as the ‘second best’ but get them to be the main-stream of our industry.  

We also need to remember that Sri Lanka is in itself a treasure-trove destination which offers a myriad of natural theme parks and traditional theme events for our visitors. We do not need to build any afresh or spend time organising make-believe events. What, in my mind we need to do, is to get it right with what we have, while sharpening the rough edges, as we do with our precious stones.

 

Mr. Kuttan of the Galle Face Hotel
Google Shared Image, credit: Nation.lk