Sri Lanka tourist arrivals fall 7.4 percent in January 2020
Sri Lanka’ tourist arrivals for January 2020 totaled 226,094. This was 7.4% below the 244, 239 total arrivals the island received in January last year. The drop in total visitor numbers for January 2020 is partly attributed to the 15% decrease in arrivals from China owing to the Coronavirus.
In addition, and, as per the Chairperson of Sri Lanka’s Tourist Development Authority Kimarli Fernando “There has been a small drop in arrivals from other destinations”. Details of the destinations from which this drop in arrivals arose were unavailable at the time of this report.
However, what it tells us is that, had there been no coronavirus outbreak, and had the number of Chinese tourists for January 2020 at the very least equaled the 4051 more Chinese tourists who arrived during January 2019, the total number of visitors to Sri Lanka last month would still be 5.8% adrift of January 2019.
This means that the progressively positive monthly recovery after the April’19 setback has been bucked – especially after the recovery efforts hauled the industry back to attracting tourists to within 4.5% less (than the same-month-last year) in Dec’19 and 9.0% less in Nov’19 … after the bottom abysmally dropped to the ground in May’19 – when the country saw a mere 37,802 total arrivals that particular month.
Sri Lanka in the meantime is expecting a sharper slowdown in tourists in February after the island stopped giving on-arrival visas Chinese visitors.
During the 4th week in January 2020, it was reported in the press that the Tourism Minister has set sights on 3.5 – 4 million travelers in 2020, whilst hoping to see average daily spending jump from US $180 to $210, and also expecting the average stay of a traveler to extend from 8 days to 10 days or more by the end of this year.
The newspaper report quoted Minister Ranatunga as saying that a new long-term marketing plan to boost tourism will be drawn up for the consideration of the industry and the government within the next few weeks.
Report compiled by in2ition.
|
|
|
|
