History
Taprobane Travel and Sri Lanka Tours are trading names for Esher Travel Ltd, a company
established in May 1977. The name Taprobane is an old name for Sri Lanka -a name
given by the Greeks many centuries ago. Since the company mainly sells tickets
to Sri Lanka it was deemed appropriate to have the two trading names which indicate
our main destination. We have been IATA (International Air Transport Association)
agents since 1977.
When we first commenced business in 1977 our airline partner was UTA the French
Airline subsequently taken over by Air France. In September 1979 Air Lanka now known
as SriLankan Airlines was formed and we were appointed agents immediately and they
have been the suppliers of the bulk of our tickets over the last 30 years. In the
year 1980 we commenced a partnership with KLM, the Royal Dutch Airline .This was
a very special partnership since we were the only agents who were given very competitive
fares to Colombo together with a large allocation of seats. This partnership ended
in 1997 when the Airline terminated their services to Colombo. At that time both
Emirates and Kuwait Airways appointed us as agents to sell their products .These
partnerships still exist. Qatar Airways appointed us as agents in 2002 and we have
been agents for Kingfisher Airlines since January 2009.
Since Incorporation we have sold over 220,000 seats to Sri Lanka since 1977 and
by far we are the agent with the highest "seat only" sales to Sri Lanka.
Mr Gamit Ameresekere has been the Managing Director of the company from inception
and Ms Kamini Rodrigo, who has been with the company since 1980, is the only other
director of the company.
The company was located at 4, Kingly Street in London W1 for 25 years and moved to 19 Golden Square, London W1 in 2002.
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