Features

Jetwing takes off and then July 1983 hits

Published

2 years ago

2024/04/7

(Excerpted from The Jetwing Story on the Life of Herbert Cooray by Shiromal Cooray)

Though conscientious about records, accounts and compliance with regulations, Herbert Cooray was never a number- cruncher. His decision-making did not involve the detailed scrutiny of feasibility studies, balance sheets and financial analyses. Like most entrepreneurs of his generation, he navigated by intuition. He would consider a proposition, talk the matter over with those who could inform or advise him, and then make his decision. He never rushed into things – nor, on the other hand, did he waste time when it was of the essence. His instincts rarely let him down.

If he had a special talent, it was for property. He had an eye for location, and over the years acquired land in some of the most picturesque .yet accessible parts of an island famed around the world for its breathtaking beauty. When the opportunity arose, he would develop these locations in ways that enhanced rather than detracted from their natural beauty. His passion, reflected to this day in the mission statement of the company he founded, which was to make a visitor’s experience unique and legendary – in direct contrast to the uniformity of mass-market hospitality and tourism.

He never lost his belief in the power of the personal touch. Sri Lanka is a country of famously hospitable people, so a Sri Lankan company in the hospitality business simply had to be exceptional. In the early years, he spent long hours at the Blue Oceanic Hotel, ensuring that every detail was just right and constantly seeking improvements. He impressed this attitude on his employees, meeting frequently with them to discuss ways and means of adding value to the service they provided.

He was equally keen to see that his staff were well treated; the investment, he knew from long experience, would be repaid many times over in staff-customer relations. This is the legacy Herbert has left at Jetwing, the constant drive to ensure all visitors to Jetwing are touched by the company’s’ unique offering of the famed Sri Lankan hospitality at its best!

In 1987, Herbert’s son Hiran graduated in Marketing and returned home from America to join the family business, Ruan Samarasinghe, meanwhile, had developed into an accomplished hotelier. These two young men would become Herbert’s indispensable lieutenants.

His portfolio of hotels continued to grow. Over the next few years, he acquired St. Andrew’s Hotel, Nuwara Eliya, from Milhuissen and the Yala Safari Game Lodge, badly damaged in the ethnic riots of 1983, from his friend V. Balasubramaniam. He was also a member of the consortium that built Eastern Village, a property fronting the spectacular beach at Nilaveli on the East Coast. It would have been a great success, but the tragic events of 1983 ensured that it was never opened. Other investments included the building of Royal Oceanic Beach Hotel, another Geoffrey Bawa hotel, in Negombo, and a stake (as well as a management interest) in the Sigiriya Village Hotel.

With so many hotels to fill with guests and run, it made sense to set up his own hotel management and marketing company. With Hayleys, a blue-chip Sri Lankan conglomerate, as his investment partner, he launched Jetwing Hotels in 1995. Hayleys, which had decided to invest in what was now being called the ‘leisure sector’ had cause to congratulate itself on its choice of partner. When the group liquidated its investment in the sector in 2010, the value of its stake had risen many times over, in spite of operating during the dark days of Sri Lanka’s tourism.

A Sri Lankan magazine, Business Today, featured the Jetwing story in their February 1998 issue. It quotes Herbert Cooray: “The tourism industry was at a pioneering stage at the time, and we had to rely on ourselves for all the resources we needed. I had several good friends, among them George Ondaatjie and Lucien Perera who supported and encouraged me over the years.

Although not a marketing genius, Herbert knew that word of mouth was a potent tool to use to market his hotels. Hence, he insisted that a legendary service, a service which others will talk about, was provided. He would meet clients and chat with them to gather important market information.

In August 1997, Hayleys, then Sri Lanka’s top business group, featured heavily in a country report by SocGen-Crosby, a leading international investment bank. The report was full of praise for Hayleys’ partner in the leisure sector: ‘Industry experts, including some competitors,’ it said, `have high regard for Jetwing’s management style, using phrases such as professional, aggressive and marketing savvy to describe it:

This was a great endorsement to a man’s passion to build a company with a dream to be the best in the industry at driving value for the clients and all other stakeholders. To Herbert, his company had to be committed to the highest of standards, that features great people who will provide a great service – which will in turn attract loyal customers.

Herbert believed from his early construction days that trust and mutual respect among employees, customers and suppliers are the foundation for success. To quote Herbert again from the 1998 issue of Business Today, “our ideal is not to be number one in the industry but to give the best service, and to be above everyone else in service.”

July 1983 saw the commencement of the darkest era in Sri Lanka’s modern history. Ethnic riots and the escalation of a hitherto low-intensity separatist insurgency caused widespread insecurity and instability, creating an atmosphere of anxiety and tension. The decade saw numerous attacks by the LTTE, the so-called ‘Tamil Tigers, on public landmarks and infrastructure, including the destruction of several aircrafts belonging to the national airline, Air Lanka. Tourism all but collapsed. Sri Lanka’s magnificent east coast was rendered nearly inaccessible as Tigers and a short-lived Indian ‘Peace Keeping Force’ jockeyed for the upper hand.

As if this was not bad enough, in the late 80’s, the south of the country was soon terrorized by a second insurgency, mounted by a nationalist/ communist group, the JVP (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna). There were more assassinations, reprisals, local, regional or even national knockdowns, and forced closures of private businesses. Implacably opposed to all things foreign JVP militants visited hotels and demanded their closure, or simply robbed the management and guests of their money and belongings at gunpoint. Finally, the chairman of the Tourist Board took an unusual step and requested foreign tour operators to repatriate their clients from Sri Lanka, effectively bringing the industry to a standstill.

In the vacuum that followed this decision, the industry was forced into severe retrenchment. With almost no tourists arriving from overseas, the competition for a few wealthy local customers and resident expatriates became fierce. Revenues plummeted as hotels and travel agencies began undercutting one another. War stories in the international media and citizen travel advisories by European countries kept the tourists away- airlines and air charter operators pulled out of the country, while trained and experienced Sri Lankan hotel and travel professionals were snapped up by overseas employers. Replacing them was almost impossible: educated young people no longer saw any future in a career in the tourism sector.

By the mid- 1990s, however, a recovery seemed to be underway. The trickle of visitors was growing and investment in tourism began to pick up again. Hostilities continued in the north and east, but the rest of the country seemed to be safe for travelers. In 2002, the government and the Tigers negotiated a ceasefire and began negotiating terms of peace. To the tourism industry, this was a much needed present – hopes soared.

They were only too soon dashed. First came 9/11, with its chilling effect on air travel and tourism worldwide. Then, at home, the peace negotiations ended in acrimony. Soon the country was back at war. The final blow came on December 26, 2004, when the Asian tsunami devastated almost the entire littoral of the island. It also all but killed the slowly reviving tourism industry. The country was in mourning and shock.

Jetwing was among the operators most severely affected by the Boxing Day tsunami; its south coast property, Yala Safari Beach Hotel, was utterly destroyed. Thirty-three people died, including the senior management of the hotel. Among the survivors were 40 other employees, who continued to be retained on the company payroll despite the total loss of their jobs, along with their workplace.

Herbert Cooray never let his people down. The families of those who perished were also taken care of, in spite of the severe financial loss to the company. It is not by accident that the senior managers of the hotel lingered to ensure that other colleagues and the clients were sent off, then costing them their lives, they lived the philosophy of customer care which is so sacred to Jetwing.

Implacably opposed to all things foreign JVP militants visited hotels and demanded their closure, or simply robbed the management and guests of their money and belongings at gunpoint. Finally, the chairman of the Tourist Board took an unusual step and requested foreign tour operators to repatriate their clients from Sri Lanka, effectively bringing the industry to a standstill.

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Features

The Division Bell Mystery

Published

20 hours ago

2026/05/29

Thilina Walpola

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 3

The murder, in a private dining room in the house, is of a financier with whom the government was negotiating a loan. When this seemed difficult the Minister of Home Affairs agreed to lead discussions, since he had known Mr Oissel the financier when they were young. Hence the private dinner, but when the Minister stepped out for a vote, Oissel was shot just as the Division Bell rang.

The Brahms and Simon detective novels, the first of which I wrote about last week, were amongst several books by the pair that Robert Scoble gave me when I was in Australia towards the end of last year. Amongst them was another thriller of a very different sort, though that too was written and set between the wars.

Called The Division Bell Mystery, it was set in the House of Commons, the first such book I believe, and was by Ellen Wilkinson, a Labour MP who became Minister of Education in Attlee’s government after the war, having served previously as Parliamentary Private Secretary to several ministers. Her hero Robert West is also a PPS, but a conservative, and his Minister, of Home Affairs, is an old style aristocrat, not much loved by the less orthodox Prime Minister, who nevertheless needs his support on many occasions.

The murder, in a private dining room in the house, is of a financier with whom the government was negotiating a loan. When this seemed difficult the Minister of Home Affairs agreed to lead discussions, since he had known Mr Oissel the financier when they were young. Hence the private dinner, but when the Minister stepped out for a vote, Oissel was shot just as the Division Bell rang.

West was just outside the door when the shot was heard, and when he opened it saw only the dead body with a revolver beside it. The assumption that this was suicide was however challenged by Oissel’s grand-daughter Annette, who was his heir, on the grounds that he would never have killed himself. But her view was given greater credence by the Inspector put in charge of the case who said there were no burn marks on the body which would have been the case had Oissel fired the pistol himself.

Matters are complicated by the fact that Oissel’s flat had been burgled while he was at dinner, and Jenks the policeman allocated to him, who had served the Home Secretary and seemed more acceptable to Oissel than someone from the Security Service, had been killed. Matters get even more complicated when Annette says her grand-father’s notebook in which he wrote his secrets in cipher was missing.

That was found in Jenks’ pocket, and then a photographer came to West to say he had been asked by Jenks to photograph this. More worryingly for West, he finds in the Home Secretary’s drawer a few pages from the notebook with what appears to be an interpretation of the cipher.

Ellen

Overwhelmed by all this he confides in a recently created peer who knows all about the business world, who insists that they leave the house party at which they had met over dinner and discuss the matter with the Prime Minister who promptly summons the Home Secretary.

But the Home Secretary had gone to Scotland to launch a ship over the weekend, so the meeting could take place only on the morning of the Monday, when difficult questions were expected on the adjournment motion. He admits at the meeting that he had got Jenks to take the notebook, and also that he knew the code since it had been created by him and Oissel when they were young.

He thought he should resign, and even contemplated suicide, but the Prime Minister told him that that would be even worse for the government, and that he should go home to bed. The Prime Minister said that he himself would handle the question, which he did with aplomb, insisting that confidentiality was needed until the inquest. What had happened would be made clear then, he declared, leaving West and Inspector Blackit and Lord Dalbeattie what seemed the impossible task of solving the murder.

Dalbeattie had suggested that West ask a female Labour MP who was very fond of him to get what information she could from the staff. That there was some involvement there had become clear when West, going back late one night to collect a briefcase he had left in a dining room, found someone lurking in the dark in the corridor outside the private rooms. Room J, where the murder had happened, was meant to be guarded throughout by a policeman, but he had left the room having felt dizzy, and it seemed that his coffee had been drugged. West’s sudden appearance however had prevented anyone else getting into the room.

Dalbeattie decides to recreate the scene of the murder and has a dinner party in Room J on the Tuesday night, inviting West and Annette and the society hostess at whose house he had met, and also Patrick Kinnaird, an MP who was engaged to Annette, as well as the Permanent Secretary to the Home Ministry.

After coffee Inspector Blackit comes in with Grace, the Labour MP who had got the confidence of the staff, and a journalist who had also been helpful, and just as they say they think they are on the track the division bell rings. Grace jumps up and tells the Inspector that that provides the solution and they get a ladder, and sure enough find the revolver in the space where the bell is. Directed at the place where Oissel had sat, it had been primed to go off with the ringing of the bell. The waiter who had helped to set things up made clear who the murderer had been.

The reason for the murder and the confused motives of all those involved made for a fascinatingly intricate mix. But also impressive in the book were the descriptions of the isolation possible in the crowded premises of the house, the forceful characterization of the members – Grace based on the writer, the society hostess based on Nancy Astor, the first female MP – and the laid back nature of senior politicians which West realized had to change in the brave new world of high finance.

Features

The challenge of keeping value-based politics alive

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Anti-migrant protests in Durban, South Africa. BBC

The current outbreak of anti-immigrant protests in Durban, South Africa is bound to have taken many a subscriber to value-based politics or political idealism quite by surprise. After all, this is evidence that despite the historic accomplishments of nation-builders of the stature of the late President Nelson Mandela it cannot be taken for granted that identity politics, including racism in its worst forms, is no more in South Africa.

At the time of this writing details are scarce on the substantive root causes of the protests but it could very well be that economic grievances, particularly on the part of the majority community in South Africa, are contributing considerably to the disaffection. Shrinking employment and material prospects are likely to figure majorly among the factors igniting the unrest.

Fortunately, the local authorities in Durban are losing no time in calling for peaceful co-existence among the relevant communities and are pointing to the vital importance of stepping-up national integration processes. Apparently, immigrants in sizable numbers from neighbouring countries are present in Durban. However, international TV footage of the protests quoted some local authorities as saying that the majority of the immigrants in some centres that housed them were not illegal migrants and had the documents that entitle them to be in Durban.

In the Durban protests the world has fresh proof of the socially divisive consequences of the gathering globe-wide economic disaffection, touched off particularly by the continuing crisis in West Asia. Going ahead, the world would need to brace for increasing identity-based unrest of the kind it is just witnessing in South Africa.

Considering that the material lot of ordinary people everywhere could only aggravate progressively, with the US and Iran showing no signs of negotiating an end to their confrontation any time soon, it will be left to the more democratic and progressive sections of the world community to initiate positive measures collectively to bring a measure of relief to the discontented.

The swiftness with which such relief will be provided would depend crucially on the importance those sections taking up these undertakings attach to value-based politics as opposed to Realpolitik of power politics.

Going by these yardsticks, Italy could be considered to be moving in the right direction. Recently Italy came to the fore in initiating the collective named, ‘Rome Coalition for Food Security and Access to Fertilizer’, which has as one of its aims the swift provision of fertilizer to economically weak African countries.

In a recent statement Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani, said that a principal aim of the project was to ensure that the farmers of Africa gained easy access to fertilizer, considering that food security is a growing concern among some of Africa’s economically vulnerable countries.

The statement went on to mention that some 30 countries hailing from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, the Balkans as well as the FAO had been invited to join the coalition. The venture is far-seeing in that food security is main among the reasons for social discontent which in turn could degenerate into endemic political turmoil and bloodshed. Separatist violence and geographical fragmentation of countries wouldn’t be too far behind these developments, as Africa itself has often proved.

It is hoped that more G7 countries would take the cue from Italy and do what they could to ease the hardships of economically distressed countries, particularly of the global South. In these efforts they would need to break rank with the US, which is today brutally indifferent to the consequences of its policy of making ‘America First’, come what may.

Going by current developments, the Trump administration seems to be blithely oblivious to the wider, deleterious effects of its policy course in West Asia. Besides rendering Iran militarily and otherwise impotent nothing else seems to matter to Washington, as regards West Asia. This is policy short-sightedness of an extreme kind. After all, right now West Asia could be said to be sitting on the proverbial powder keg.

On the other hand, Iran is not giving the world the impression that it is doing anything constructive to get out of the policy straitjacket that it wove for itself decades ago. Rather than enter into a policy of ‘live and let live’ in relation to Israel in particular and initiate a process of reconciliation with the latter, it has chosen to operate within policy parameters that continue to damn Israel. This has put Israel always on the ‘defensive’ so to speak and prevented the opening up of space for meaningful dialogue.

That said, Israel is obliged to explore the possibilities of entering into a negotiatory process with the Arab-Islamic world that could lead to a de-escalation of tensions and bloodshed. It cannot continue to look at its neighbours through lenses that distort them as archetypal enemies who should be ‘wiped off completely from the face of the earth.’

In other words, the need is urgent for Realpolitik to give way to value-based politicks. Italy is beginning to prove that the latter approach could be pursued with some success. May be the EU and the UK could throw their weight behind these initiatives as well and establish that international politics could be refashioned on the basis of humane, civilized norms. The UN would need to be fully supportive of these moves and prove an organizational nucleus of the operations that follow.

In fact the time is ripe for people of conscience to collectively stand up on the side of peace and say ‘No’ to war and violence. Organizations such as the ICRC, the WHO and Medicines Sans Frontiers have already taken up this call. Referring to the widespread destruction of health facilities and their dehumanizing results these organizations have said, among other things, that ‘This is not a failure of the law. It is a failure of political will.’

True, ‘failure of political will’ among those powers that matter accounts for the runaway, uncontrollable nature of war and destruction in contemporary times, but more fundamentally it is a failure of the human conscience. It could very well be that the phenomenal levels to which violence and war have been unleashed today have had the effect of deadening consciences. This is a matter for urgent study and wide discussion.

Features

Vesak celebrations … with Cuteefly

Published

2 days ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions // Gift pack

I would describe Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka as innovative and creative, and she operates under the name of Cuteefly.

Indunil always comes up with something novel to celebrate special occasions, and she does it with candles … and that’s her profession.

She was in the spotlight when she created a happening scene, with candles, for Christmas, Sinhala and Tamil New Year, and Valentine’s Day.

As lanterns light up Sri Lanka for Vesak, the Colombo-based candle maker is quietly turning wax and wick into little pieces of the festival.

Candles reflecting Vesak themes

Her candles reflect Vesak themes – light, peace, remembrance, giving, etc., to enable you to fill your Vesak celebration with devotion and beauty.

Among her Vesak creations is a lotus-shaped soy candle, scented with sandalwood, lavender, etc., meant to burn during this Vesak Poya Day.

Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka: Customers
praise her for her creativity

These handcrafted Vesak candles are perfect for offering at the temple, she says.

What makes her creations so novel is that they come in different shapes, scents, themes, and all are handmade.

What’s more, her customers have heaped praise on her for her creativity.

According to Indunil, her creations are perfect as a thoughtful gift … to bring beauty, unity, and light into every moment.

Says Indunil: “Our beautifully handcrafted Unity candles are designed with premium detail and love, making them perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions.”

Cuteefly, says Indunil, is available online.

Readers could contact Indunil on 0778506066 for more details.

He Facebook Page is: Cuteefly.