Cumulative tourist arrivals for the period January 1 – September 6 stand at 927, 214, nearing the 1mn milestone
By: Staff Writer
Colombo (LNW): Sri Lanka welcomed a total of 22,896 tourists for the first six days of September, fulfilling 19 percent of the target set for the month. Sri Lanka aims to draw at least 120,201 international visitors for the month of September.
Based on the provisional data released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLDTA), the cumulative tourist arrival for the period January 1 – September 6 stood at 927, 214, nearing the 1 million milestone.
The daily arrival average in the six days of September is 3,816. The composition of the top source markets for Sri Lanka has changed with China slipping away from the third position, moving to the sixth. China contributed to 5 percent of the total arrivals for the month of September so far, bringing in 1,114 tourists.
India and the United Kingdom retained their position as the first and second largest tourist traffic generators for Sri Lanka, accounting for 27 percent (6,188), and 7 percent (1,693) of the total arrivals so far for the month.
While Germany ranked in the third position, bringing in 7 percent (1,513) visitors, the Russian Federation moved up to the fourth position, accounting for 6 percent of the total arrivals (1,434).
Sri Lanka expects to host 1.55 million visitors and earn $2.7 billion in much-needed tourism revenue this year, as it maps a road to the recovery of its tourism sector amid its worst economic crisis in decades.
This is up from the 720,000 tourists and $1.1 billion in tourism earnings in 2022, Padma Siriwardana, managing director of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, told The National on Thursday on the sidelines of the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai. However, this is still below the record 2.3 million visitors that flocked to the country in 2018. The recovery comes after the country’s tourism sector suffered several setbacks: the Easter attacks in 2019, the two-year Covid-19 pandemic and widespread street protests in 2022 in response to an unprecedented economic crisis that led to severe shortages of food, medicine, fuel, cooking gas and electricity.
