[The immediate effect has been devastating for tourism, one of the main drivers of Sri Lanka’s economy. Since the end of a long civil war in 2009, the country has moved aggressively to build its tourism industry, promoting itself as having everything offered by top regional destinations like Thailand and Bali — ancient sites, beaches, wildlife — but without the crowds.]
By
Mujib Mashal and Kai Schultz
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A
staff member lighting candles in the empty dining room of the Santani hotel in
Werapitiya, Sri Lanka. Credit
Adam Dean for The New York Times
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WERAPITIYA,
Sri Lanka — Tucked away
behind a ridge, surrounded by lush mountains where 45 bird species chirp, is a
luxury resort that sells peace of mind for about $900 a night.
The resort, Santani, opened in 2017 here in
Sri Lanka, and quickly received a series of accolades for hotels and spas.
Rooms spread across 50 acres were booked continuously, often by celebrities and
business tycoons. The influx of jobs and cash transformed the nearby village.
The owner purchased 70 additional acres and made plans for an expansion.
But those plans are now on hold, and
cancellations are piling up — at Santani, and across Sri Lanka.
Last month, bombings on Easter Sunday at
churches and at hotels popular with foreign tourists left more than 250 people
dead. Britain, India, the United States and several other countries warned
their citizens to stay away, citing the possibility of further attacks.
The immediate effect has been devastating for
tourism, one of the main drivers of Sri Lanka’s economy. Since the end of a
long civil war in 2009, the country has moved aggressively to build its tourism
industry, promoting itself as having everything offered by top regional
destinations like Thailand and Bali — ancient sites, beaches, wildlife — but
without the crowds.
About 2.4 million tourists visited Sri Lanka
last year, up from 500,000 in 2009. Those numbers were expected to only grow
this year, with Lonely Planet listing Sri Lanka as the No. 1 destination for
travel in 2019.
Sanath Ukwatte, president of the Hotels
Association of Sri Lanka, said that hotels that once had 70 percent occupancy
are now 10 percent full at most. “Everything is running at the moment, but
without guests,” he said.
He estimated that losses this year could be
as much as $1.5 billion.
Officials are scrambling to contain the
fallout. The bombings were a one-time event, they say, and no different than
recent attacks in Paris, Istanbul or London.
Hoteliers are lobbying the government for
financial bailouts to keep the industry afloat. They have also increased
security measures, with commandos guarding the entrance of luxury hotels in
Colombo and, in some cases, using sniffer dogs to check vacated guest rooms.
Others are thinking of giving up.
Mark Maurice, the owner of Bunky Monkey
Hostels, a small property near the ocean in Colombo, said that all reservations
for May had been canceled. Having opened his property only last year, he is
considering closing, worried that the damage from the Easter attacks might be
worse than that from the civil war.
“We knew which parts of the country were
safe,” he said of the wartime years, when fighting was concentrated largely in
the north and east. “But at this time, there is an uncertainty. It’s very hard
to say how long these attacks will affect tourism.”
The Santani resort is at least a four-hour
drive from the coastal cities targeted in the attacks, but it, too, is feeling
the effects. Seventy percent of May reservations were canceled within a week of
the bombings.
For Vickum Nawagamuwage, the owner of
Santani, the fallout dredged up painful memories of the outbreak of Sri Lanka’s
civil war.
His father operated a fleet of cars for tours
around the island. As the number of visitors dwindled in the face of rising
violence, he laid off drivers and eventually closed the business completely.
Mr. Nawagamuwage, who was 11 at the time, remembers one of the drivers weeping
at their front door one evening.
“I thought now I was living my father’s worst
nightmares,” Mr. Nawagamuwage said of the bombings.
Mr. Nawagamuwage got into the hotel business
after a career as an international consultant. He returned to Sri Lanka after
the war, as the government was pushing tourism.
“Everyone was still developing beach villas
and hotels — and by that point we couldn’t compete in that with places like
Maldives,” he said. “I wanted to do something outside the beach.”
He bought 50 acres in the mountains, seeing
an opportunity to harness the serene environment, history of Buddhism and
spirituality, and herbal Ayurvedic traditions of Sri Lanka into a wellness retreat.
He named it Santani, which in Sanskrit means “in harmony.”
Like cars, the human body needs regular
servicing, he said. At Santani, that would be offered — in the yoga studio
built into the slope, in the spa that includes a saltwater bath, in the fine
dining offerings, for which the chef travels 60 miles a week to handpick the
fish.
It also showed how tourism can transform a
small community.
Before Santani opened, the local high school,
the post office and the temple were the area’s main landmarks. Villagers either
farmed vegetables to sell at nearby markets or left for jobs elsewhere.
Now the resort sponsors high school sports
events and takes in three of its top “home sciences” students as kitchen
apprentices. In return, the resort uses the school grounds as a helipad for
guests.
But perhaps no one illustrates the effects of
a cash injection better than the Senarathna family. Before the resort, Samantha
Priya Senarathna earned about $20 a month guarding the property for its
previous owner. He made an additional $40 from a roadside tea stand.
When construction work started, he won
initial contracts for work like erecting fences around the property and
clearing trees. He employed nearly a dozen people, including his younger
brother Priyanka.
The elder Mr. Senarathna now has a beautiful
two-story house off the village’s main road. It has three bedrooms on the
second floor for his wife and two children, and a busy grocery shop on the
ground floor that the family runs. He has paid off 60 percent of the loans for
the house.
“It is hard to imagine I would have all
this,” he said.
The younger Mr. Senarathna, who had worked on
the property as a laborer, got a job in the kitchen when the resort opened,
starting as a dishwasher and making his way up. Last week, he was promoted to
commis, or chef’s assistant.
But the bombings have changed everything, at
least in the short term. Employee salaries depend on the hotel’s service charge
— a kind of formalized tipping system that is tied to occupancy. In some cases,
it is as much as 70 percent. And guests are scarce these days.
For much of a recent week, Bridget Errington,
a social worker from London, was the only guest at Santani. Friends had urged
her to cancel her trip, which she booked in February.
But Ms. Errington had backpacked in Sri Lanka
20 years ago, and knew that the hill country was far from the sites of the
attacks. She said she had enjoyed having the resort to herself, and felt perfectly
safe “wrapped by the nature, by the mountains.”
“I was the last man standing here,” she said.
“I joked with the staff that ‘I am the owner now — it’s a takeover.’”
The situation has been less of a joke for
Osanda Dissanayake, the giggly 21-year-old naturalist who leads tours down to
the river.
His daily tours usually included at least a
dozen people. His last tour, on Monday last week, had just three, including Ms.
Errington. After that, no tours.
“There’s nothing to do,” he said. “For the
past two days, I have been going round and round.”
Mujib Mashal reported from Werapitiya, and
Kai Schultz from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Jeffrey Gettleman and Hannah Beech
contributed reporting.
