- Rohantha Athukorala at PATA conference

The Pacific Asia Tourist Association (PATA) the premier travel and tourism catalyst staged it's 2015 conference on the growing global trends in the 3 billion dollar global tourism industry at the picturesque district of Sichuan Province in China that attracted the top 300 tourism specialists from around the world with the key note delivered by Xu Jing Executive Secretary of the General Assembly and the Executive Council Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, UNWTO.

PATA Annual Summit 

The session highlight on Marketing a competitive destination trends brought to stage the Director General for Malaysia Tourism specialist Dato’ AzizanNoordin and Sri Lankan award winning marketer Rohantha Athukorala, the current Chair of Sri Lanka Tourism promotions globally with the session chaired by BBC famed World News presenter SharanjitLeyl. How Malaysia is recovering post the two crashes of Malaysian airliner was articulates by DatoNoordin whilst Athukorala conceptualized how almost sixty percent of modern travellers use online information in the decision making process which are not only related to tourism and destination driven information but general news on the country.

Dr. Rohantha Athukorala , Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism addressing PATA 

Hence if the behaviour on the global stage by a country is not positive then it sure influences the choice of the destination brand voiced Athukorala which is where Nation Brand Building parameters like exports, governance, people/culture, politicians views, sports support the destination marketing drive that we in tourism must focus on he said. The Nepal chairman of PATA chapter Suman Pandey commented this was a key pick up for us as in the digital age Nation Branding parameters merge with designation marketing initiatives I totally agree. 

Athukorala went on to mention how almost 30 million people wait to taste daily the cup of Ceylon Tea if not their day is not made as Sri Lanka is the only source that produce ethical tea globally as per the Kyoto protocol. Whilst daily there are millions of people who wear a top end clothes brand essentially in the US or Europe which was ethically manufactured in Sri Lanka which is the power of nation brand building pillars that can influence an on linesearcher of information on a country. Athukorala voiced how the BBC anchor who chaired the session mentioned to him that only after the regime change that she decided to visit Sri Lanka given the Governance issues that Sri Lanka was associated with prior to the 8th of January 2015. These are all nation branding pillars which influence tourism in a country and hence we see the wider role and scope of destination policy makers and communicators he said. 

Dignitaries at PATA Annual Summit 

Sri Lanka has many treasures that we are focussing on apart from the ones discussed like 90% of the world use Ceylon Cinnamon across the world daily, we are knows as the sapphire capital of the world where princess Diana wore a sapphire on her wedding day whilst it's the only country where the two biggest animals of the world can be seen - whale and elephant on a single day. Athukorala said how the World Cup soccer star Carles Piyol who was a top Barcelona captain in the world of soccer visited Sri Lanka around two weeks back garnered 1 million views on face book in just 24 hours. 

The use of social media by Asia-Pacific travellers is significantly different than that of leisure travellers from the US and the EMEA regions. Less than one in five US consumers sought social inspiration for any of these travel activities, and in Europe and South Africa (the only non-European country from the region included in the survey), only about one in seven travellers used social media to get ideas for trips.

Mario Hardy the CEO of PATA in his inaugural address said the speakers and the subjects for discussion for the 2015 conference were picked based on a careful analysis of the current issues and the key trends faced in the tourism industry which zeroed down to the management of Heritage sites globally. There were three case studies discussed the ' Great Wall of China' which nets in a revenue of right billion dollars on the private-public sector business model.