Cinnamon Life is the largest integrated resort in South Asia
Radhey Tawar
How is the development of Cinnamon Life coming along and how has the response been?
Cinnamon Life is an ambitious project not only for Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts, but also for John Keels, and also for Colombo and Sri Lanka as a whole. This is the biggest ever private investment in the country, which attunes to about USD 1.3 billion. There are two residential towers and one office tower, which has already been open since 2020 and 2021. The hotel, Cinnamon Life, which is branded now as Cinnamon Life City of Dreams Sri Lanka, is a partnership collaboration.
It is a 687-room hotel, six speciality restaurants and 12 food and beverage spaces. It also has one of the largest MICE and event spaces in the country, which is tuned to about 16,000 sqm, combining indoor and outdoor meeting spaces. Cinnamon Life City of Dreams opened on October 15 last year.
That is one part of the hotel. There is also a partnership with Melco, which is a world-class casino operator. They are amongst the top five in the world in terms of casino operations. We have partnered with them to manage and operate the casino, the gaming space, which is also the largest gaming space in South Asia with about 17,500 sqm of area, that casino, the gaming experience, plus there is a mall that is coming up attached to the complex. That is the last part of the operation and the opening, which is going to open in quarter three of this year.
With that, we are already looking at Sri Lanka exceeding or having the best year of tourism in 2025. Last few months have been really exciting for us. India being the number one market, it continues to grow.
And what is happening now in Colombo with all the developments and the new hotels, luxury hotels that are coming up, we see a different and new kind of travellers that is going to come and visit Colombo. Sri Lanka project is very exciting. This is by far the best and the most luxurious hotel in town. We believe that this is going to really change the landscape of Colombo, cinema hotels and resorts and also Sri Lanka.
Which segment of Indian visitors do you target?
India is the largest market not only for Sri Lanka, but also for Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts. While Sri Lanka gets about 16 to 17 pc of the total arrivals from India, for Cinnamon, that number is about 20 pc across all our 17 hotels. When we talk about the segments, I think right now what we have really seen is a lot of interest in the destination weddings, which is mostly getting attracted to one of our two signature properties, Cinnamon Bentota Beach and of course, Cinamon Life.
Colombo traditionally did not attract a lot of destination weddings, but with the addition of Cinnamon Life, we believe that the interest is really renewed because it is now really getting its position as the leading gaming and entertainment destination in Colombo. So, destination weddings is one segment that we have already seen in Cinnamon Bentota Beach and now in Colombo. At the same time, high-end MICE is what we will see country getting more and more traffic, not only from India, but also from Middle East and the European markets.
Cinnamon has several luxurious properties that attract a significant footfall from India
What steps are you taking in terms of sustainability?
I think sustainability has been on top of our agenda, and there are numerous initiatives I can talk about, but I will just mention a few. Our whole sustainability initiatives are driven by the governance, driven by sustainability, of course, to reduce the consumption of the carbon footprint, and also to support our people and our communities that we work with.
Some of the initiatives in Sri Lanka, we have been, along with John Keels, which is our parent company, we have been working with helping rainforest restoration programme, where we had commitment to plant 75,000 trees over the course of last three years. The initiative has already completed, but we are going to go beyond our original target and ensure that the initiative carries on as much as possible with everybody’s support. In Maldives, we have been partnering with the government authorities to place the ocean temperature data loggers, which helps identify and give some really extreme details about the climate change, about the coral reef, and also about the marine life of the environment.
That is an initiative we are working with the Maldives government. In Sri Lanka also, we have a lot of initiatives that are there with the people and the communities that we work with. So that is really to say that all the communities that are living and working around our hotels, we want to see how do we engage with them and ensure that anything that we do is also impacting positively their livelihood.
These are some of the key initiatives. Women empowerment is also at the forefront of everything that we do, and there are programmes in place to drive the women workforce and the women leadership in our organisation.
What is your target for Indian market in 2025?
From a Cinnamon Life point of view, as far as the Indian travellers are concerned, we have the MICE travellers, which is the biggest contributors to Cinnamon Life. With 687 groups, we have the ability to cater and that is the largest inventory in Colombo. Under one group, you can have, on a double occupancy, easily up to 1,000 people in the house, which no other hotel has the facility to. So that is why the MICE becomes really important.
From the Indian traveller, large groups, which usually you have to split if you are bringing to Colombo. Now you do not have to do that. Everything is under one group.
So that is where it is really important to ensure that we are able to cater and attract those big MICE groups to the country. We have the global sales offices in India directly working with us. That is a team which has grown over the years. Now we have a presence in Mumbai. We have a presence in Delhi. Last year we added Chennai.
This year we added Bengaluru, as the need grows, we will continue to expand that team to ensure we are directly connected to our partners and our customers in the country. So that is how most of our business from India is going to get given to the global sales office here.
Any promotional or branding campaign in pipeline?
We will shortly be launching our signature weekends. It is a bit early to talk about, but the first of such campaign is under work at the moment. We have a collaboration with noted filmmaker Deepa Mehta. That going to happen in early April where we are launching the signature weekends at Cinnamon Bentota Beach. This is signature weekends are part of the signature selection portfolio.
Cinnamon Life will also have such weekends where we are going to partner with various artists to bring on something really unique to the destination as signature weekends. It will offer an event, food and beverage, and also stay experiences combined with those artists and those events.
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