Belatedly though, sincere good wishes for a happier, brighter 2021!

I will not dwell on the year past as much has been said about it and hope you are coping as well as one could under the trying circumstances. The intensity and severity is different from country to country, region to region, or even city to city, but the human spirit somehow manages to overcome the challenges.

As for us at Jetwing, it has been a very trying period. However, thankfully, the domestic market to whom we have always catered to, stood by us and patronized our spaces. This enabled us to keep our teams at the Jetwing Hotels occupied, and they continued to provide the legendary Jetwing service, to all our clients whom we were privileged to serve. Unfortunately, this was not true to the Travels team as our borders were closed and there were simply no clients coming in or Sri Lankans going out. So, we had shorter work weeks and hours during this time. We also enhanced our product knowledge and skilled ourselves to work with the new guidelines. We were also able to spend more time at home with our loved ones, and some of us put our latent skills into work. We had some colleagues baking cakes, making delicious dishes etc. to occupy the spare time.

On a positive note, our International borders reopened on the 21st of January and are hopeful that the airlines will also resume their flights gradually. We are thankful to Qatar airways, Emirates Airlines, Oman Air, Singapore Airlines and our own national carrier Sri Lankan Airlines for continuing their flights to and from Sri Lanka throughout the period. We had a client booked to visit us on the 22nd and whose arrival we eagerly awaited. It seems almost unreal that there is so much excitement with the Travels team to handle our first post COVID client. Everything was set in place, the Chauffeur had done his PCR test and we kept him at an isolated facility, he had accustomed himself with driving with the PPE kit, the Hotel, in this case Jetwing Lagoon was ready and waiting. This is the first step and there will be many such small steps and we are ready all the way.

We sincerely hope the vaccine will turn things into a more positive, travel conducive environment during this year and we can all resume our lives perhaps in the “new normal”!

Stay safe and take care, Much love from sunny Sri Lanka! Shiromal Cooray Chairman & Managing Director – Jetwing Travels (Pvt) Ltd Chairman – Jetwing Hotels Ltd

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