Sri Lanka Tourism crosses one million mark with June 2024's 113,470 visitor total
During the month of June 2024 and up until the 26th (included), the daily arrivals total averaged 3,654. A late surge in the number of arrivals, with a daily average of 4,613 visitors during the last four days of the month end, (between the 27th until 30th ), carried June 2024 total arrivals to 113,470, and more importantly, nudged the total number of arrivals for the first-half of the year, past the magical one million mark – to reach 1,010,249.
Once more, India retained its top source of market slot in June registering 28,631 arrivals (25.2%) of the total market. The second-best source country was the UK with 9,266 arrivals (8,2%), while China ascended to take the third position with 8,575 (7.6%) visitors.
Year-to-date (YTD), India remains the leading source market with a cumulative total of 184,468 arrivals, followed by Russia with 114,104 and the UK with 58,819.
For 2024, Sri Lanka Tourism has set a target to attract 2.3 million tourists and generate over $ 4 billion in revenue.
Sri Lanka has consistently missed its monthly tourist arrival targets from January to June 2024 by 13.9%, 8.4%, 11.4%, 18.5%, 14.4% and a whopping 31% (in June), when it missed its forecast of 148,675 for that month, by a wide margin.
At this mid-year point in time, with the country emerging phoenix-like from an economic crisis, the upward trajectory is strikingly aligned to that of 2017 (for the same period), when the total arrivals at the mid-year juncture in that year, totaled 1,010,444 arrivals.
Year 2017 went on to generate a total 2,116,407 arrivals for Sri Lanka. However, one must note that there were 134,744 Chinese arrivals in total in the first half of 2017, compared with the 63,816 that have visited the island in the same period in 2024.
While Sri Lanka continues to navigate the challenges arising from internal and external factors, in the tourism sector, and where the consistent growth in visitor numbers signals a positive outlook for the industry, it needs to re-calibrate its predictive analytics.
Admittedly, setting appropriately ambitious targets than can pull a steady line of traffic through today’s uncertain tourism landscape is an exceedingly difficult task. No one can be totally on the money on predictions – but there is guidance to be followed and, in that respect, forecasting accuracy can only be determined by using the best model available.
Hospitality Sri Lanka
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