Original Thought is Incredibly Compelling w/ Chamindra Goonewardene (Sri Lanka)

My guest this month is my friend Chamindra Goonewardene from Sri Lanka. He oversees a portfolio of hotels on his home island, doing sales and marketing. The son of a hotelier, he spent a lot of time in hotels from his earliest years. When it came time to go to university, he came to the US and studied at Duke in North Carolina. He loved the place, the people, the experience. And almost stayed, but just as he was completing his studies, it was about the time that the war was ending in Sri Lanka. A number of his buddies & he decided it would be a ripe time to return home to start their careers. He started in marketing and advertising, but his heart was always with travel .. it was always a magnet. He ended up getting an MBA in Tourism Marketing and worked with a wellness-focused property up in the mountains of Northern Sri Lanka for a spell, then met the folks at Resplendent Ceylon just about 5 years ago and this is where he sits currently.I wanted to sit down with Chamindra because of the pretty unique position he’s in, within his country, in our business. He doesn’t have the backing of tourism boards and governmental authorities, like most other parts of the world do, to sell or tell the story of a place. Let these other entities tell the story, entice people across the world to the destination, and leave selling the hotel piece to the hoteliers and sales directors. Sri Lanka doesn’t have that. At least they don’t at the luxury or highest end, where Chamindra’s collection of hotels sit. So upper 4 and 5* hoteliers in Sri Lanka, are having to not just sell their hotels, but the entire country. And in the case of Chamindra, he’s doing that first and foremost. He considers himself an ambassador of his country. He loves his hotels, he loves his country. He’s able to shape the taste or style of his country in the minds of foreigners. He’s young, he’s cool, he’s stylish. It’s a challenge, but a beautiful position to be in, opportunity to have, in my opinion. And they’re doing a fantastic job at it. Very different to what I see others in similar roles doing around the world because so many have fallen into default … this is how we’ve always engaged with travel professionals. Chamindra and his colleagues have a different challenge, so they come at tackling it rightfully very differently. Creative, out of the box. Bridging, first, the knowing of a place with second, where you choose to sleep and immerse yourself within in a place. With each piece of content, each event, each meeting, it’s high-end, class, elegance, taste. He and his counterparts focus on positioning, destination marketing, liaising with tastemakers and journalists across the world. They’re shaping what Sri Lanka is to someone. And that’s powerful.