At a time when Sri Lanka’s tourism industry is celebrating a near-complete rebound in visitor arrivals, Tourism Promotion Bureau Chairman Buddika Hewawasam is urging caution—arguing that growth without accuracy is a risk the sector can no longer afford.
Despite welcoming over 2.36 million tourists in 2025 and earning more than US $3 billion, Hewawasam has deliberately delayed announcing revenue targets for 2026. His reasoning challenges a long-standing industry culture that equates success with volume rather than value.
According to Hewawasam, Sri Lanka’s tourism planning has been compromised for years by outdated assumptions, particularly those based on decade-old expenditure surveys. With global travel patterns transformed by the pandemic and climate-related disruptions such as Cyclone Ditwah, he argues that only verified, current data can guide sustainable policy.
The revised estimate of US $140 daily tourist spending, emerging from a new nationwide survey, has sparked debate within the industry. Yet Hewawasam maintains that acknowledging lower yields is preferable to masking them with inflated averages that distort investment and marketing decisions.
His approach also places renewed emphasis on domestic tourism and revenue leakage, two areas historically overlooked in Sri Lanka’s tourism accounting. The forthcoming leakage survey and Tourism Satellite Accounting system aim to quantify tourism’s real economic footprint rather than its perceived one.
In the short term, this data-first philosophy may temper expectations of rapid post-cyclone recovery. In the long term, however, it could redefine Sri Lanka’s tourism model shifting it from headline-driven optimism to evidence-based resilience.
As the industry looks toward 2026, Hewawasam’s stance suggests that credible numbers, not ambitious slogans, will determine whether tourism truly delivers national recovery.
