Last month's arrivals to Sri Lanka march past the 100,000 mark
106,500 tourist arrivals were welcomed to the island in March 2022 – the highest number of visitors in a single month since COVID-19 hit the world in March 2020. Sri Lanka’s monthly tourist arrivals crossed the 100,000 mark for the first time in two years, whilst, the cumulative total in the first quarter for this year, surpassed the 194,500 tourists recorded for the entirety of 2021.
Despite the unprecedented crises in the country, last month’s record numbers of travelers fueled Sri Lanka’s growth momentum pushing year-to-date (Jan – Mar) arrivals, to 285,334.
As per provisional data released by the Tourism Ministry, the upward trajectory reflects a sharp growth of 14% from February, pointing out that it was mostly influenced by growing traveler confidence, aggressive tourism promotions, the French adventure trail ‘Raid Amazones’, continued service from more international airlines, eased travel restrictions and a successful vaccination program.
In March, the top five tourist source markets were; India 23,216, UK 12,908, Germany 9,516, Russia 8,889 and France 5,741.
India continues to head Sri Lanka’s ‘Top Ten’ tourist source market list with 47,711 tourists so far, followed by Russia with 37,717, with the UK’s 30,992 taking third place, Germany 22,680, France 15,056, Ukraine 13,463, Poland 10,815, Kazakhstan 7,460, Australia 6,861 and US 6,798, in that order, by the end of first quarter 2022.
Last December, Sri Lanka set a highly ambitious target to attract 2.3 million tourist arrivals during 2022; only to drastically cut such expectations down to 1.1 million, after the ‘Omicron’ variant surfaced in major source markets. In early February, it once again revised its forecast to 1.3 million. Late last month, Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga renewed his hopes of attracting 150,000 visitors monthly in the next six months - meaning, luring more than 1.5 million visitors to Sri Lanka by the end of this year.
However, Industry experts were skeptical about achieving the 150,000 monthly targets at this juncture, given the multiple crises and wide-spread angry public protests that are taking place in the country at present. Meanwhile, The UK, US and Canadian governments have issued travel advisories to its citizens in view of the current situation.
Hospitality Sri Lanka
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