That struck a nerve with me because I think that decision explains almost everything that followed. You came home, stayed, and then spent decades convincing foreigners to come here too. You carried Jetwing through a civil war, tourism collapses, the tsunami, Easter Sunday, COVID, political crises and everything else this country managed to throw at tourism, while still arguing that Sri Lanka should compete on quality rather than quantity, protect what people come here to see, benefit local communities and sell the country properly.
There is a personal reason I understand part of this. My mom’s family built Sporting Star, which dominated sports gambling in Sri Lanka from the 1950s onward. Decades later, Chadu modernised that same world through Betss.com. My Edna family had another kind of business history. I’ve also had some exposure to the environmental side through Alpex Marine.
So I know, in my own way, what happens when one generation builds something substantial and the next generation has to decide whether to preserve it, modernise it, waste it, or let somebody else define what it meant.
That is why I look at Jetwing differently.
Herbert built something. You came home and carried it. Now there is another responsibility: making sure the story of what your family actually built survives as well as the hotels themselves.
Buildings can be sold. Management changes. Brands get diluted. People die. Memories disappear.