Talking to Former India wicketkeeper Saba Karim, Jayasuriya said, “We want more Indians to come and visit Sri Lanka. We have several cultural and nice places to visit in Sri Lanka. We have everything on the small Island.”

Shortages of essential supplies in Sri Lanka have eased somewhat in the last month, but normalcy is still a long way off. Recently, economic crisis-hit Sri Lanka won the Asia Cup 2022 in UAE and took the top spot for the first time in eight years by upsetting Pakistan in the final. The tournament was shifted from Sri Lanka to the United Arab Emirates because of the country’s political and economic crisis.

Sanath posted his video message on his Twitter handle and wrote,” We got everything in my small Island for tourists, it’s a lovely place to visit, we went through a bad phase and now we need tourists back to revive Sri Lanka, I am requesting all our Indian friends to #VisitSriLanka.”

“It’s important for us to support Sri Lanka as a team. Players are also doing their bit. We are expecting 1 million tours by the end of this year. We are focussing and promoting mainly India to come and visit Sri Lanka and see how beautiful this country is,” he further said.

Leading a three-city road show for Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, Harin Fernando, the Minister of Tourism & Lands of Sri Lanka said that the Tourism Board would be working toward creating many partnerships with airline companies, hotels and OTAs, in the upcoming days to get back swiftly in tourism, which was impacted badly in the wake of the pandemic, along with the political and economic disturbances.

The minister said that one of the main approaches to recover tourism, which is an important pillar for the island nation’s economy, is to hold big-ticket events in December in Colombo along with other places to entice tourists from overseas.