Tourism hits half a million arrival milestone in under 3 months

Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals have soared past the 500,000 mark in just the third month of the year, with March alone crossing the 100,000 milestone, over the weekend. 

This surge reaffirms the industry’s strong momentum towards robust growth.

This is the first time since the pandemic that the island nation has crossed the half a million mark in two and a half months. Last year, Sri Lanka crossed the milestone in the second week of May.

The provisional data released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority showed that for the first 14 days of March, Sri Lanka welcomed 91,205 international visitors. This brings the cumulative tourist arrivals for the January 01 to March 14 to 517,808. With the daily arrival average for the month of March having increased to 6,500, the 100,000 arrival mark was crossed on March 16. Should the tourist arrival momentum continue, Sri Lanka will be able cross the 200,000 arrival mark for the third consecutive month this year – again, a first since the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, an analysis of the weekly arrival data shows that it is likely Sri Lanka will end the month with a lower number of tourists when compared with February; the reason being, in February, the weekly arrival average was about 55,000, whereas for March, it is about 45,000.

For March, the Russian Federation ranks as the largest tourist traffic generator, accounting for 15 percent (13,699) of the tourist arrivals. India stands in the second place, accounting for 15 percent, bringing in 13,492 tourists.

Germany, the United Kingdom, France and China are the other key source markets. 

For the first two months of the year, the tourism sector generated a cumulative US $ 687.5 million revenue. This is a 118.2 percent growth from the same period in 2023.

The island nation recorded US $ 345.7 million from the tourism trade in February, out of 218,350 visitors, churning out the much-needed foreign incomes for the dollar-hungry nation to keep its economy afloat.
This is higher than the US $ 161.6 million recorded in the same month a year ago.