New network to support Sri Lankan tourism

The Small and Medium Enterprises Network of Tourism Sri Lanka (SMENTS) has been established to connect and showcase stakeholders at regional, intra-regional, and international SME tourism markets.

The SMENTS has been established for providing a platform to share and implement best practices and experiences through linkages and joint strategies as well as to provide promotional and marketing tools and opportunities to stakeholders who have fewer resources to place them in ever-changing and robust global tourism marketing scenarios.

The newly established SMENTS will help to influence and secure improvement of the industry while protecting cultural heritage and environment and to gain awareness and responsibility towards society and the environment.

The Sri Lanka Ecotourism Foundation (SLEF) that has initiated to establish this network believes that networking worldwide will help small and medium stakeholders of the tourism industry not only to link with each other, but will also help them to market and showcase their products at international and regional markets and connect them to international stakeholders. SMENTS will provide support to its members to place them in international networking through promoting their products.

？The Sri Lanka Ecotourism Foundation, the pioneer national ecotourism association of Sri Lanka, has been taking a number of initiatives in the past to promote small and medium tourism stakeholders, and SMENTS is another initiative taken by SLEF.

"The world is moving to mobile and IT apps, and over 42% buying and selling in [the] tourism industry is done through using mobile phones applications, while overall, 69% selling and buying of tourism products are done through other digital tools including websites and social media platforms. Small and medium tourism stakeholders of Sri Lanka hardly [have] any presence there, giving a room only to resourceful international firms to sell Sri Lankan products as 'middlemen' and this situation is not only keeping tourism dollars out of Sri Lanka, [but also] services are bought at very cheaper prices. Here we have come up with solutions and platforms to sustain [THE] livelihood of small and medium tourism stakeholders," believes SLEF according to a press statement.

"We are giving a voice to small and medium tourism entrepreneurs of Sri Lanka that can be heard in the wider global forum of discussions and feel the SME tourism fraternity proud through tourism businesses," added the press statement.

SMENTS will function as an umbrella organization of SLEF in the tourism sector of Sri Lanka, and internationally will be steered by a professional experienced team of SME entities of Sri Lanka tourism and supported by an expert panel of international advisors from Costa Rica, Australia, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine Malaysia, and Canada representing the worldwide SME tourism movement.

The SME tourism sector is one of the most formidable tourism segments in Sri Lanka tourism. It generates a sizable income to Sri Lanka's economy by way of foreign exchange through tourism. It is an accepted fact that the tourism income generated by the SME sector in a country does not drain back to generating markets abroad through the handful of companies managed by local and foreign multinational tourism giants of the mainstream tourism sector. In Sri Lanka, there are more than 5,000 SME tourism entities but most of the establishments are not registered with local authorities or the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, (SLTDA). SMENTS' formidable task will be to get those unregistered SME entities to the fold and make them aware of the importance of the worldwide SME tourism movement and give them an opportunity to promote their businesses.