By Walter Jayawardhana

In a major boost up for Sri Lanka tourism the United Kingdom’s free sheet leader, The Metro morning daily with 1.1 million circulation announced a trip to Sri Lanka’s tea country in collaboration with Lipton Tea for a summer contest winners.

Calling Sri Lanka “the spiritual home” of Lipton Tea the newspaper which distributes more than one million of its copies beating all other newspapers by giving away on all five working days mainly at Metropolitan London’s underground railway stations where Londoners in their millions converge to commute to work said, “Win tea in Sri Lanka,” in a front page announcement.

In a promotion for Lipton ice tea for the sweltering London summer contest the newspaper offered a week’s paid up vacation at “the spiritual home of Lipton Ice tea, the luxury tea factory hotel, built in the 1930s by British planters.”

“Pick and process of your own tea at the hotel’s miniature tea factory and indulge in five course fine dining in the hotel’s restored railway carriage restaurant,” the announcement accompanied by a scenic image of a Sri Lankan tea garden said.

Unilever, the current owners of Lipton Tea said the tea promotion is carried with the collaboration of Associated Newspapers Ltd. – a division of Daily Mail and General Trust that publishes the Metro.

The Scottish-born entrepreneur, Thomas Lipton acquired tea estates in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), organized packaging and transportation at low cost and made tea, a beverage then enjoyed only by the rich into the beverage of the common people all over the world. As he said, he wanted to sell tea “direct from the tea garden to the tea pot.” For his services he was knighted by Queen Victoria as Sir Thomas Lipton in 1898 at the relatively younger age of 48. Places attached with his life in the high grown tea area in Sri Lanka have become tourist attractions.

This prize includes: Return economy flights from London Heathrow to Colombo, Return airport to hotel transfers, 7 nights in a standard room at the Tea Factory or a escorted tour which incorporates the Tea Factory, Daily breakfast, Comprehensive travel insurance

Open for travel from the 1st April until the 31st October 2009, excluding all Bank Holiday periods and subject to availability.

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