Highly respected tourism industry veteran Prema Cooray passed away yesterday after a brief illness at a private hospital.
Cooray has a distinguished career, accumulating over three decades of experience in the travel and tourism sector.
Among his key achievements were leading and developing Sri Lanka’s premier hotel chain Aitken Spence from 1984 to 2003 and taking Sri Lanka’s hospitality expertise overseas to the Maldives in 1991 and building the first-ever resort – Club Rannahli by a Sri Lankan company in 1996.
Cooray’s leadership led to the development of the famous Kandalama Hotel in 1994, creating a new dimension in Sri Lanka’s tourism landscape.
As Chairman of the USAID-supported Tourism Cluster in 2000-2008, he gave leadership to the concept “Beyond Beaches to Nature, Culture and Adventure”. This initiative has enabled Sri Lanka to profile its diversity to the desired potential. Prema also pioneered the development of the first-ever Eco-Lodge Best Practice Pilot project bordering Sinharaja forest in 2006 onwards. This signalled the first-ever private sector-led national initiative to showcase Sri Lanka’s entry into eco-tourism.
As Chairman of the Sri Lanka Convention Bureau (2007-2009), he played a key role in developing MICE business from all across India.
He was bestowed with the ‘Legend’ status at the fifth Sri Lanka Tourism Awards in 2012.
