SriLankan Airlines has scaled down inbound flights from countries whose tour operators had strongly promoted Sri Lanka for its beaches—including Japan and certain destinations in Europe—in an effort to fashion out a short-term post-tsunami marketing plan.

"We have come up with a short-term plan to tide over till mid-June," explained Chandana de Silva, head of corporate communications. "We have reduced flights from countries which we identify as ‘tour operator markets’, where most holidays had been tagged with beaches. Under the new plan, our major focus is going to be the Middle East and South East Asia."

SriLankan has reduced its London flights from 12 to eight and its Colombo-Male-Tokyo flights from three to two. It also consolidated the Colombo-Zurich-Frankfurt destinations and is now operating three flights on this sector. It earlier had five flights to Zurich and three to Frankfurt. The Karachi sector has been scaled down from three to two flights. However, another flight will soon be introduced to Singapore and Malaysia while the company will also start canvassing the Indian market more avidly. After June, China will become the focus of a concentrated campaign to woo tourists here.

De Silva said SriLankan had found that visitors from countries like Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong were not exclusively "beach crowd" but were also interested in culture, the tea plantations and other areas of the country. Meanwhile, new types of tourists were emerging; among them is the crowd that wants to "come and see what happened" and the crowd that "wants to come and help". SriLankan is also devising a new offer whereby visitors would be offered a trip on which they could tour the country but also work with local communities, offering various types of post-tsunami assistance.

"We want to change the mindsets of people," de Silva explained, adding that this was sometimes difficult between 60 and 70 per cent of the carrier’s seats were contracted to tour operators. If tour operators advised against travel to a particular country, their word tended to be heeded. "But they have so far been quite helpful," de Silva said. Many of them wanted to make an assessment of the hotels and surrounding environment before actively promoting Sri Lanka again.

Meanwhile, SriLankan Airlines has decided to participate in every trade fair possible. The company had earlier resolved to cut down participation because of high fuel costs but this decision has now been reversed. An advertising campaign that had been curtailed before the tsunami is also back on track.

"It is important to market Sri Lanka as country," de Silva said. "Not just our beaches and cultural triangle."

Commenting on the reactions of other major airlines post-tsunami, de Silva said they had all made commercial decision to reduce operations but had supported Sri Lanka by continuing to run.

"They also scaled down but they operated flights even with less passengers," he explained.