Khiri Travel Sri Lanka reaps rewards for designing sustainable experiences

With Sri Lanka open­ing its bor­ders for inter­na­tion­al tour­ists much earli­er than many oth­er Asi­an coun­tries, arrival num­bers have slowly star­ted pick­ing up since August 2021. Espe­cially since quar­ant­ine require­ments lif­ted for fully vac­cin­ated tour­ists from Octo­ber, demand has kept increasing. 

Khiri Travel Sri Lanka anti­cip­ated increas­ing demand for more sus­tain­able and off-the-beaten-track exper­i­ences and geared up for it by design­ing a range of exper­i­ences focused on hav­ing a pos­it­ive impact on the envir­on­ment as well as loc­al communities. 

These exper­i­ences became instant best-sellers as our pre­dic­tions proved to be right. 

With the Christ­mas peak sea­son com­ing close to a nor­mal year, and the entire winter sea­son up to April per­form­ing much bet­ter than expec­ted, it was very reward­ing to see the exper­i­ences that we designed dur­ing the tough times (amidst par­tial lock­downs, travel restric­tions, and the sur­round­ing ambi­gu­ity) start­ing to per­form well and bene­fit loc­al communities. 

We believe that every product that we devel­op should bene­fit the envir­on­ment or the com­munity, which is in line with our pur­pose of “mak­ing tour­ism a force for good”.

One of the ini­tial exper­i­ences that we designed was “Voy­age at Sea; A Mar­ine Exped­i­tion”; a private whale watch­ing cruise accom­pan­ied by a mar­ine bio­lo­gist, with a sea­food lunch on board and all frills added in. 

We hand­picked a respons­ible boat oper­at­or and, with the mar­ine bio­lo­gist adding the edu­ca­tion­al com­pon­ent, our main inten­tion was to prove that sus­tain­able exper­i­ences can be designed for ultra high-end travellers. 

To make things even bet­ter, we tied up this exper­i­ence with a seagrass res­tor­a­tion pro­ject in Kal­pitiya. This was developed in con­junc­tion with Ocean Con­ser­va­tion and Edu­ca­tion Alli­ance (OCEA Sri Lanka). Every private whale watch­ing cruise that we sell includes a fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tion towards the seagrass res­tor­a­tion pro­ject. In the future we also expect our guests to volun­teer in Kalpitiya.

In the out­skirts of Kandy, we developed an exper­i­ence named “Sav­ing Forests with a Taste of Spices”. This involves a walk through a Kandy­an forest garden full of spices and tak­ing a look at a spices pro­cessing work­shop, fol­lowed by a short cook­ing demon­stra­tion and an authen­t­ic rice and curry lunch. 

Once again, the price of this exper­i­ence includes a con­tri­bu­tion to the Forest Heal­ing Found­a­tion which focuses on refor­est­a­tion and afforestation. 

With the Sri Lankan eco­nomy going through a tough time and tour­ist num­bers drop­ping down once again, we will again focus on devel­op­ing more sus­tain­able experiences. 

We have just fin­ished a famil­i­ar­isa­tion trip to the South East and the new­est upcom­ing exper­i­ence will be based on the story of curd and pot­tery mak­ing in Tissamaharama. 

At Khiri Travel Sri Lanka we are optim­ist­ic that things will recov­er soon. We are gear­ing up for it to ensure we have yet anoth­er story of resi­li­ence to share. 

Fea­tured image (top of post): The Khiri Travel Sri Lanka team explored their home island to cre­ate sus­tain­able travel experiences.

About Khiri Travel

Pur­pose: Mak­ing tour­ism a force for good.

Vis­ion: It is our goal that our pas­sion­ately designed travel exper­i­ences – regard­less of travel style and budget – provide unfor­get­table, high-qual­ity exper­i­ences for our trav­el­ers as well as an effort­less, inspir­ing way to con­trib­ute pos­it­ively to the con­ser­va­tion of com­munit­ies and des­tin­a­tions we travel to.

Mis­sion: As a lead­ing des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment com­pany, Khiri Travel deliv­ers cre­at­ive and per­son­al­ised itin­er­ar­ies with the highest stand­ard of ser­vice to dis­cern­ing tour oper­at­ors world­wide. We hold ourselves account­able for the triple-bot­tom line:

People • Plan­et • Profit