COLOMBO, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's Tourism Ministry has approved 16 new hotel projects worth 23.30 million U.S. dollars in the second quarter of this year, local media reports said here Wednesday.
The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) said in a report that the new hotels approved will have less than 49 rooms each.
Out of the 16 hotels, four have been approved in the Gampaha District, north of capital Colombo, while three each are in the Galle and Matara Districts, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka.
Meanwhile, seven new hotels became operational in the June quarter.
From 2010 till June 2019, the SLTDA has approved 382 hotel projects with investments of 2.98 billion U.S. dollars.
Of them, 207 hotels with 1.7-billion-U.S. dollar investments are operational, 107 hotels with 958 million U.S. dollars are being built and 68 hotels with 249 million U.S. dollars are yet to begin construction.
