Sri Lanka Tourism struggles despite gains
Tourism has become the fastest way to inject revenue into national economies. Hence, countries around the world are fiercely competing for international travellers amid a global economic slowdown. This battle for tourists now involves aggressive visa facilitation, streamlined travel measures, and significant promotional budgets—efforts not merely aimed at enhancing the national image, but at generating tangible economic circulation.
In the first quarter of 2025, Malaysia became the most-visited country in Southeast Asia, overshadowing Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore. Malaysia’s rise was fuelled by a combination of visa-free entry policies, targeted marketing, and infrastructure upgrades. The Malaysian government recently extended its visa-free policy for Chinese tourists by five years. Indian tourists are also included in the scheme, which currently runs through 2026. The initiative targets travellers from Asia’s two most populous nations.
Despite Tourism been Sri Lanka’s third-biggest export earner and the Government claiming it a priority for growth… it’s being all talk, little walk. Wishing and over-confidence is becoming the signature of this Government, the way sanctimony and aimlessness were hallmarks of previous ones. Here, the issue is of stumbling growth in one of the country’s main service exports.
The total number of tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka in the first half of 2025 stands at 1,168,044 – up 15.6% year-on-year. Compared to the benchmark year of 2018, the country has registered a marginal 0.29% growth for the same period.
Looking to the rest of this year, a further period of growth in visitor numbers is expected. At the current growth trajectory, the country is likely to push visitor numbers to circa 2.4 million. If this projection proves accurate, this would be 17% above the 2 Million total actual arrivals in 2024. While this would be an impressive increase in numbers on last year, the island’s post-pandemic recovery remains incomplete.
Sri Lanka’s tourist authority, SLTDA, projects 3 million tourists to visit this year. Historically, its forecasts have tended to overtly overestimate demand. Sadly, those at the helm of our tourism industry are getting the country’s stunning landscape to do all its work. The policy of free entry visas to Sri Lanka announced by the previous government for tourists from 35 countries, to come into effect from October 2024 has not seen the light of day upto now!
Adding to the woes, whilst competing destinations are way ahead running aggressive campaigns, Sri Lanka Tourism is still dragging its feet on the island’s much bragged about global tourism campaign, which was originally due for launch in January 2025 going MIA (missing-in-action).
Without global marketing, it's a challenging and potentially slow path. Relying on, word-of-mouth, pre-existing networks, relationships with specific travel agencies, diaspora and favorable external factors can be successful upto a certain point, But reaching a large international audience typically requires a more robust global marketing strategy.
That Sri Lanka Tourism utterly fails to understand this is vexatious.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Motivational Speaker, Ex-Hotelier.
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