Srilal Miththapala honoured with THASL Lifetime Achievement Award

The Hotels Association of Sri Lanka (THASL), at its 58th Annual General Meeting, honoured Srilal Miththapala with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. 
The award was presented by President Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Miththapala is a Chartered Electrical Engineer with a first degree in Electrical Engineering. His initial career was at the Richard Pieris & Co Arpico factory, as Chief Engineer. After a short stint as Electrical Engineer at the State Engineering Department Doha Qatar, he joined the tourism industry in 1985 as General Manager of the 190-room resort Riverina Hotel, Beruwala. Subsequently, he held posts at Confifi Group 1988-1999 as Director Operations and Director Business Development. 

Miththapala acknowledges the late Prof. M.T.A. Furkhan as his mentor, who gave him a break and thrust him into the tourism industry.
In 1999, Miththapala moved to Serendib Leisure Management as CEO, where he served for 10 years, managing the Serendib, Sigiriya, Reefcomber and Dolphin Resort hotels. After leaving Serendib Leisure in 2009, he took up the position of Project Manager of the successful EU-SWITCH ASIA Genting Hotels, administered by the Chamber of Commerce, 2009-2013. This was the initiative that created awareness in him on the importance of sustainability in the tourism industry. Since then, he has been a strong advocate of sustainable tourism, giving numerous lecture presentations, talks and engaged in the training of industry professionals. 

He received the Green Jobs’ Environment Award 2009, in the category of Climate Change, awarded by the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry, to mark the World Environment Day.
Miththapala has been a board member of the Sri Lanka Hotel Classification Committee, Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management and Public Utility Commission Consultative Committee.  He was a founder Director of Rainforest Eco Lodge Sinharaja and currently serves on the board of Laugfs Leisure. 
He has been a long-standing member of THASL, serving as its President (2009/2010).

He has the unique distinction of being perhaps the only person to hold a Fellowship in both the Institute of Hospitality UK and Institute of Electrical Engineering UK.
Now in his retirement, he engages in various consultancy assignments in sustainable tourism development, environment and wildlife. Apart from many private sector organisations, he has worked on assignments with the MDF and S4IG (the contracting arms of the Australian DFAT programme), YouLead (a contracting arm of USAID), UNDP GEF Project and GiZ 
Evolvers Project.