Mr Upul Dharmadasa is a former member of the hospitality sector of Sri Lanka and served at Hotel Intercontinental, Holiday inn, and Oberoi. He was an employee of Air Ceylon, the National Carrier of Sri Lanka. He was also the Head of the Food and Beverages on board Lanka Kalyani, the cadet training ship of the Ceylon Shipping Corporation, before migrating to the United States to join his wife, Barbara Dharmadasa.
He completed Nutrition and Food Service Professional Training in the United States at the University of North Dakota. He worked as an in-house hospital dietician before starting Upul’s Travel Service.
Dharmadasa was a student of the Ceylon Hotel School specializing in F&B and currently sitting for an MBA (UK). Following his migration to the USA with the Air Ceylon experience, he excelled in the travel industry in Los Angeles through the well-known name brand in the USA under Upul’s Travel Service, servicing the approximately 750,000 Sri Lankans living in the USA and 400,000 in Canada.
In 2017, he advanced travel technology and developed, Utravel.com, based in Los Angeles, which is now available and operated worldwide as a Global Travel booking engine.
Once he began his travel career in the USA, American Airlines trained him in Dallas FT worth. As a result, he is among the 5% of the travel professionals in the USA who bear the designation of CTC (Certified Travel Counsellor), the program offered by the Institute of Certified Travel Agents in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for travel professionals who completed a comprehensive travel program.
Previously he was the Chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka (CAASL). Dharmadasa succeeded Nimal Perera, who was Chairman of Hotel Developers’ comprehensive travel program.
