Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau launched its first roadshow in Melbourne, Australia on 17^th May with a great success. This was designed to educate the Australian travel trade while developing strong relationships between Sri Lankan tourism providers and Australian travel agents. The Sri Lanka Roadshows will be conducted in three major Australian cities during next week.

The first roadshow in the series was begun from Melbourne city yesterday evening hosting 29 Sri Lankan Tourism companies with more than 75 esteemed members of the Australian travel industry. These members were shared business contacts and engaged with fruitful trade related discussions during the B to B networking sessions. The event was held in Sheraton, Melbourne, a five star hotel located in Melbourne’s central business district and this was highly attracted with the leading brands of Australian travel sector such as Flight Centre, Intrepid Travel, Natural Focus Safaris, Helloworld and many more.

There were few productive speeches delivered by the delegates during the session. Mr. Prasanna, Consul General, Sri Lanka in Melbourne and Madubhani Perera, Director /Marketing for Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau was highly commended speeches.

Other VIP guests included Andrew Fairley, Deputy Chairman of Tourism Australia and Miss Australia, Laura Bradley, for Miss Tourism International Sri Lanka who recently visited Sri Lanka also shared their enjoyable memories about the destination.

Mr. Devendre Senarathne, President/SLAITO and Mr. Rohan Abewickrema, President/ASMET also seated on the head table sharing their expertise during the event. Ms. Chami Gasnawage, Assistant Director Marketing from SLTPB was presented at the forum making all arrangements to make the event a success.

The attendees were offered with a sumptuous three course dinner and lovely prizes that included fully hosted fact finding trips to Sri Lanka. Among all, there were nine lucky participants who won a range of packages and flights gifted by Pledge Holidays, Golden Isle, Cinnamon Air, Air India, Singapore Airlines, Bernard Tours, Airwings and Camlo Lanka Tours.