Colombo (LNW): Sri Lanka welcomed a significant 100,388 portion of tourist arrivals in June, 2023, marking the first time in four years that tourist arrivals surpassed 100,000, a report by DailyFT disclosed.
Signalling a positive momentum for the Tourism Sector in the crisis-hit Sri Lanka, the new arrivals have largely been influenced by the Indian travellers, following the successful series of roadshows conducted in select cities of India over the past couple of months, the report added.
That being said, India emerged as the biggest source market year-to-date after finally relegating Russia to second place.
624,874 tourist arrivals were reported in the first half of 2023, however, the performance is still considered down by 46 per cent compared to the corresponding period in the benchmark year 2018.
“With 95,104 tourists or 13% remaining to catch up to last year’s arrival target, Sri Lanka aims to achieve its set target of two million arrivals by the end of the year. Despite the ambitious target, the industry anticipates over 1.4 million tourists within the next six months and encouragingly, the stakeholders expressed optimism about accomplishing this target,” the DailyFT report said.
India topped the tourist traffic to Sri Lanka in June, with 26,830 visitors, accounting for 27 per cent of the total visits for June, followed by the United Kingdom with 7,981 visitors (08 per cent), Russia with 7,968 visitors (08 per cent), Australia with 6,195 visitors (06 per cent), and China with 5,105 visitors (05 per cent).
Additionally, tourists from Germany, Canada, Maldives, the United States, and France also visited Sri Lanka in June.
The daily average arrivals have also improved moderately to 3,346 in June, compared to 2,687 in May, showing signs of off-peak demand.
