July 2025 sees a total 200,244 tourists visit Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals increased 6.6 %, from the 187,810 arrivals it welcomed the same month a year ago, after a total 200,244 visitors came to the island in July 2025. Last month’s visitor total is a marginal improvement over that of July 2024. More concerning is that, it is by far, the lowest monthly increase seen over that accomplished during the previous six months of this year- when compared month to month between 2024/25.

37,128 visitors were from India, making up 18.5% of total arrivals, continued to dominate the top 10 Tourists by Destination ranking, The UK’s contribution of 23,475 (11.7%) tourists saw them in 2^nd place, followed by the Dutch who numbered 15,556 (7.8 %). In 4^th position was China with 12,982 (6.5%), and France with 11,059 visitors (5,5%) slotting into 5^th place.

Germany, Australia, Spain, Canada and the US filled up the 6^th to 10^th positions in that order, respectively. The top five collectively contributed 50% of July 2025’s total arrivals.

Total foreign visitors for this year, ending 31^st July are 1,368,288, of which a total 689,882 (50.4%) came from India, the UK, the Russian Federation, Germany and China.

Sri Lanka will give one year visa to citizens of the Maldives, restoring a facility for longer term visas. “From August 01, we will give Maldives citizens one-year visas,” said Foreign Minister Vijith Herath said. He went on to add “Up to now we gave only short-term visas for Maldives citizens, subject to certain observations.This was soon after, Sri Lanka extended tourists from 40 countries free visa entry in an effort to boost visitor numbers. The move to expand this visa fee waiver to 47 countries comes long past what other regional competitor countries such as the Maldives, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia have done much earlier.

Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Board’s Managing Director explains that failure to ineffective capitalize on this initiative was due to reasons including delays in communicating with target audiences and time constraints. Hence, it could not be launched earlier. If that be the case, the waivers will likely not come into effect immediately, as the visa free waiver was only very recently passed by the cabinet.

Hospitality Sri Lanka

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