Sri Lanka records over 100,000 tourists for 2nd consecutive month in 2023
Tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka totaled 107, 639 in February 2023.
This was nearly 5% more than the total number of visitors that arrived in January, and despite February having three days less than the previous month’s.
Same Month, year-on-year, it was 11.53 % over that achieved during February 2022.
The top five source markets during February 2023 were; - Russia with 29,084 visitors (27%), India with 13,713 (13%), the UK with 8,575 (8%), Germany with 7,930 (7%) and visitors from France with 6,118 (6%), in that order, respectively.
The accumulative total of 65,420 visitors from these five countries accounts for over 60% of February 2023’s total tourist arrivals.
The total number of arrivals for the months of January and February 2023 is 210,184 and is a 17.5 % increase over that of 2022 – Year-to-Date.
In 2022, the island welcomed a total 719,978 international visitors and is targeting the goal of attracting 1.55 million tourists this year. The doubling of the predicted total for 2023 against the actual number achieved in 2022 is driven by the expectation that the Chinese market will resume w.e.f March, whilst India will be the top source market this year.
Earlier this year, the Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), Priyantha Fernando said. “We are targeting almost 260,000 India arrivals this year, (123,004 Indians visited Sri Lanka during 2022), adding that in 2019, before the COVID-19 crisis, Sri Lanka welcomed 1.9 million tourists, with 355,002 tourists from India, 198,776 from the UK and 167,863 from China.
Mr. Fernando also mentioned that they expect Indian tourists to spend about US$ 1,850 per person in Sri Lanka with the authorities now allowing tourists to bring up to 10,000 Indian rupees to spend in Sri Lanka. “Definitely that is going to help tourism as well as and now Indians get good value for money 4.70 for 1 rupee,”. He went on to further say that they are expecting a surge in the traffic of Chinese tourists.
Hospitality Sri Lanka
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