Sri Lanka records 252,761 tourists during the first month of 2025
The island nation began 2025 welcoming 252,761 international visitors in January whilst falling short of its targeted 305,687 projection for the month by 17%.
However, last month’s actual arrivals number marks a 21% increase compared to January 2024 and a 5.8% rise from January 2018. January 2025 now ranks as the second highest month for tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka’s history. The highest figure recorded todate was in December 2018, with 253,169 arrivals.
India was the best tourism source market for Sri Lanka with 43,375 (17.2%) arrivals. This, no doubt, is the outcome of a free visa and good connectivity, with a short flying time. The Russian Federation with 34,096 (13.5%) was the second, while in third, fourth and fifth positions, stood the United Kingdom (UK) with 21,730 (8.6%) arrivals, followed by China producing 16,709 (6.6%) and Germany’s 15,050 (6%) visitors, respectively.
Sri Lanka is targeting 3 million arrivals generating total US$ 5 billion revenue, and is confident of making 2025 the best year for the country’s tourism history, surpassing the previous best of total 2,333,796 arrivals achieved in 2018.
According to the Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), each tourist to the country spends about Rs.40,000 (US$ 1,300) on average, per day. About 1.4 billion people travelled internationally in 2024, which is 99 percent of the number who did the same in 2019, the last full year before Covid-19 hit the world. That amounted to US$1.9 trillion being spent in the tourism industry, meaning each tourist spent more than $1,000 per person on average.
There were over 8.8 million total International movements (arrivals and departures) at Sri Lanka’s three International airports (BIA, Mattala & Jaffna). The government expects to attract 12 million air passengers by the year 2028.
Plans afoot to commence the reconstruction of Terminal 2, targeted to open by March 2028. For now, to cope with the increase in tourist arrivals, a decision to include at least 20 more check-in counters at the Katunayake Airport has been taken by the authorities.
Hospitality Sri Lanka
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