By: Staff Writer
August 06, Colombo (LNW): Sri Lanka recorded 200,244 tourist arrivals in July 2025, marking a 7% year-on-year (YoY) growth and the highest monthly arrivals since 2018. The surge, particularly evident in the final week of the month, reflects a renewed global interest in the island, following its recent ranking as the No. 1 island in the world for 2025 by travel platform Big 7 Travel.
However, despite this encouraging growth, the country fell short of its ambitious monthly target of 277,195 visitors—missing the mark by nearly 77,000 tourists. The July figure also lags behind July 2018’s total of 217,829, indicating Sri Lanka is yet to fully recover its pre-crisis tourism momentum.
Arrivals showed steady weekly gains, beginning with 42,233 visitors in the first week, followed by 44,262 in the second, 46,469 in the third, and a strong finish with 67,280 tourists in the final week. The average daily arrival rate stood at 6,459, outperforming last year’s 6,058 daily average for July.
Year-to-date (YTD) arrivals have now surpassed 1.36 million, a 14.2% increase compared to the same period in 2024. Nonetheless, this still trails the 2018 benchmark, which stood at over 1.38 million by end-July—highlighting a 1.4% shortfall.
India continues to lead as Sri Lanka’s largest tourism source market, contributing 37,128 arrivals in July alone and 279,122 for the year so far. Other key contributors for the month included the UK, Netherlands, China, and France. Cumulatively, the UK and Russia follow India in total arrivals this year.
Despite this growth, tourism industry stakeholders have raised concerns about the absence of a coordinated promotional strategy. Although the government has proposed visa-free entry for citizens from 40 countries, no official timeline has been announced. Furthermore, long-promised global marketing and nation branding campaigns remain unlaunched, frustrating private sector efforts to sustain growth.
With Sri Lanka aiming for 3 million tourist arrivals and $5 billion in tourism revenue in 2025, it still needs to attract over 1.36 million visitors—or 54%—before the end of the year. Stakeholders argue that beyond positive global rankings, policy delays and lack of execution pose a greater threat to reaching these targets.
