Sri Lanka’s tourism promotion bureau says it is collecting information on a number of sites and locations less frequented by foreigners but have potential to become popular tourist attractions.

The bureau, which spearheads all marketing and promotional functions says, it has identified 200 such scenic locations across the country which are popular among domestic travelers but are not in the international tourist trail.

Rumy Jauffer, managing director of the tourism promotion bureau speaking at a cabinet briefing yesterday said the on-going project will actively collect information on these locations, document it and make it available on the internet by end October 2011.

The bureau will also put electronic tourist information kiosks at key hotels and other locations to disseminate this information to tourists.

The island nation, emerging after the end of a three decade long ethnic conflict is aggressively pushing its tourism industry to be among the top five foreign exchange earners by 2015.

Foreign visitors have been flocking to the country since the end of war in 2009 and room rates have also moved up.

The economic development ministry in a recent statement said the government is planning to convert the colonial-era fort in the north that was also fought over during the recent ethnic war into a tourist attraction.

"The Fort of Jaffna is to be converted into a tourist centre soon when the phase one of the ongoing renovation projects costing 104 million rupees is completed shortly." it said.

The government is also in discussions to permit eco-friendly hotels in buffer zones adjacent to nature reserves to cater to increased local and international interest in the island's wildlife assets.

Earnings boost

The industry earned USD 370.1 million in revenues in the first half of 2011, up 50.9 percent from a year earlier, amid a strong increase in arrivals, official data showed.

Data by the state tourism promotion agency showed that in the six months to June arrivals had grown to 381,538, up 36.9 percent from a year earlier.

Speaking at the press briefing deputy economic development minister Lakshman Yapa Abeywardene said, the government also wants to ensure Samurdhi recipient families will benefit from Sri Lanka’s fast growing tourism sector.

It is estimated that the sector can create 500,000 direct and indirect job opportunities by 2016.

Post war Sri Lankan tourism sector is attracting big leisure brands like Canadian based Four Seasons and Hong Kong’s Shangri-La.