Sri Lanka Tourism reaches 31% of its 2023 goal with 100,388 tourist arrivals in June

Tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka during June 2023 registered a total 100,388. The increase in the number of arrivals reflects a 59% increase over the arrivals in June 2019 - the last pre-pandemic year. June 2023’s arrivals are also the first time, in the past four years, that the total visitor count for that particular month crossed the 100,000 tally.

India, United Kingdom, Russia, Australia and China were Sri Lanka’s top five international tourist generating markets in the month of June this year.

The largest source of tourist traffic to Sri Lanka was India with 26, 830 visitors, accounting for 27% of last month’s total, with The UK’s 7,981 visitors and  7,968 Russians accounting  for  8% of the total traffic, respectively. Australia followed with 6,195 visitors (6%), leaving China at 5^th slot with 5,105 visitors (5%). Together, visitors from these 5 countries produced 55% of the month’s total arrivals.

India also stood as the top tourist source market for Sri Lanka year-to-date, with a cumulative number of arrivals at 116,193, followed by Russia with 110,275 and the United Kingdom with 50,822.

Between 1^st January and 30^th June, i.e. by mid 2023, the total actual visitor count has reached 624,874. This year’s halfway mark total arrivals are 46% less than the 1,164,647 arrivals achieved in the same period in 2018. It is also less than the 1,008,449 visitors who came in the same period for year 2019, by 38%. One must recall that the arrivals particularly during the months May and June in 2019, suffered a huge setback in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings that occurred in late April.

Air China – the flag carrier of the People’s Republic of China started operating three scheduled flights per week to Colombo with effect from July. The Chairman of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), expects China to perform better going forward since three of its main carriers are currently operating to Colombo.

With Sri Lanka Tourism having set 2 million visitors as the country’s target for this year, the second half of the year will need to generate 1.4 million arrivals. Put differently, in the next 184 days, the daily average arrivals will need to shoot up to 7,609 per day from the daily average of 3,452 recorded during the first six months of the year.

Despite the optimism voiced by the industry stakeholders, it is left to be seen as to whether this will materialize.

Hospitality Sri Lanka

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