Sri Lanka’s Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts Sets New Standard For Sustainable Tourism With Pata Award

Published on September 15, 2025

Sri Lanka’s Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts has been recognised by nan Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) pinch nan 2025 Gold Award for Best Ecosystem & Wildlife Conservation for nan Cinnamon Rainforest Restoration Project, underscoring nan organisation’s deep-rooted committedness to biology stewardship and innovative ecosystem rehabilitation crossed nan island.

Launched successful 2022, nan task occupies 59 acres successful Suduwelipotha, situated successful Sri Lanka’s richly biodiverse bedewed zone. Once severely degraded, nan tract has been revitalised into a flourishing refuge for endemic and susceptible wildlife, demonstrating nan capacity of nan backstage assemblage to lead effective and enduring conservation.

Devised to safeguard and renew nan island’s bonzer earthy heritage, nan task simultaneously illustrates a sustainable tourism paradigm and showcases nan nonstop benefits tourism tin make for conservation. The ongoing revitalisation reaffirms nan pivotal usability that nan assemblage tin fulfil successful preserving nan country’s ecological networks.

The Cinnamon Rainforest Restoration Project constitutes a system programme of rehabilitation targeting ecosystems modified by anthropogenic and incremental decline. Located wrong Sri Lanka’s bedewed zone, an internationally defined centre for uncommon biologic enrichment, nan inaugural concentrates connected restoring environments captious to endemic works and animal life. The monitoring, works propagation, and threat mitigation measures implemented will heighten nan reservoirs of cistron travel while, astatine nan aforesaid time, providing ecosystem services straight supportive of neighbouring tourism operations.

Since nan inaugural commenced, it has recorded bonzer advancement: 22,797 autochthonal trees person been established, achieving an 85-90% endurance rate, and nan ongoing restoration has yielded nan recognition of 36 antecedently undocumented works species, among which is nan noteworthy reintegration of Pini Beraliya (Doona ovalifolia), a timber type formerly considered extinct successful situ, underscoring a cardinal occurrence successful conservation biology.

Faunal surveys conducted wrong nan restoration area person catalogued 251 vertebrate and invertebrate taxa, 54 of which are recognised arsenic endemic and 43 recorded arsenic globally important by nationalist threat assessments. Persevering protection of these taxa is assured done nan multi-layered attack instituted by nan project, which integrates silviculture pinch residence guidance to found a unchangeable corridor successful which biota proceed to reproduce.

Multi-actor synergies successful conservation

The sustained viability of nan Cinnamon Rainforest Restoration Project derives from a synergistic web encompassing furniture ministries, locally registered NGOs, and firm stewardship. Allocation of an operational property ensued from nan Sri Lanka Forest Department, an workout that demonstrates nan decisive levers exercised by authorities agencies and nan law imperative extending from their legislative instruction to bolster logical and inclusive guidance of nan country’s earthy patrimony.

Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts is collaborated not only by nan region’s champion ecologists wrong its ain Nature Trails squad but besides by nan John Keells Foundation, which supplies nan basal funding, and nan Sri Lankan NGO Ruk Rekaganno (The Tree Society), charged pinch carrying retired ground-level activities. Their respective expertise is complemented by an overarching technological direction, enabling coherence and rigor astatine each operational layer. This synergy illustrates that enduring ecological restoration is champion pursued done joined portfolios of finance, governance, and method capacity.

Such collaborative architecture goes beyond demonstration; it operationalises a pathology of power done which nan hospitality sector, reconciled pinch master institutions and nan wider community, systematically steers ecological recovery. The exemplary signifies that travel, erstwhile tethered productively to charitable and scholarly agencies, accelerates restorative momentum and mobilises inducement structures friends to resilience.

The inaugural is anchored wrong Sri Lanka’s wider sustainable tourism narrative. The country’s tourism maturation reinforces a applicable axiom: semipermanent assemblage vitality is imperilled without residual biodiversity and minimal ecological breach. The inaugural offers guests empirical grounds of accelerating recovery, making ecological restoration a section of engagement arsenic compelling and profitable.

Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts marries modern hospitality to a sustainability schedule by channelling integrated stimulation into each service. The program interconnects operators, ownership, and guests successful a balanced ledger of prosperity, convincingly illustrating that luxury and accountability are not antithetical but congruent partners successful semipermanent commercialized value.

The Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts group, successful progressive business pinch location conservation organisations, is redefining Sri Lanka’s eco-tourism landscape. The parallel beforehand of nan Rainforest Restoration Project not only demonstrates ecological revitalisation but besides advances organization use by cultivating a corporate knowing of biology stewardship and supplying eco-tourism options whose revenues are reinvested locally.

Encouraging Responsible Journeying

The grant of a PATA Gold badge not only is simply a tribute to Cinnamon’s exemplary conservation stewardship but besides catalyses a world speech regarding responsible journeying. Amid escalating interest complete nan impacts of overtourism and ecosystem decline, nan Cinnamon Rainforest Restoration Project stands arsenic a persuasive testament that nan recreation assemblage tin represent a important agency of ecological governance.

When visitors align pinch sustainable enterprise, they augment conservation momentum while securing nan viability of Sri Lanka’s wilderness for succeeding generations. The Rainforest Restoration Project frankincense illustrates really nan assemblage tin germinate from a accepted luxury exemplary into a proactive exemplar of sustainable deliberation, presenting guests pinch nan chance to acquisition untouched ecosystems while ensuring their enduring integrity.

Conclusion: Advancing nan Frontiers of Eco-Tourism

The Cinnamon Rainforest Restoration Project stands arsenic a compelling illustration of really Sri Lanka’s tourism manufacture tin catalyse wildlife preservation and scenery rehabilitation. Distinguished by nan PATA Gold Award for Best Ecosystem and Wildlife Conservation, nan undertaking now establishes a durable benchmark for sustainable tourism believe crossed nan region. In an era erstwhile informed travellers progressively request responsible and purposeful itineraries, specified initiatives will stay instrumental successful safeguarding nan globe’s astir irreplaceable ecological assets.