Tourism earnings climb to $1.12B in Q1

Sri Lanka’s tourism trade generated earnings of US $ 354.0 million for March, the final month of the peak winter earnings season, bringing the total earnings for the three months to US $ 1,122.3 million.
The March earnings was up by nearly US$16 million when compared with the US $ 338.4 million generated in the same month in 2024.
The first three months' earnings was a 9.4 percent increase from the same period in 2024.
The higher earnings was possible from the higher arrivals of 229,298 in March, up from the 209,181 in the same period last year but down from what Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) had targeted.
In the first three months Sri Lanka welcomed 722,276 visitors, up 13.6 percent from the same period in 2024.
In the first 15 days in April, Sri Lanka has seen 93,915 global travelers taking visits to Sri Lanka.
Sri Lanka, despite the global trade tensions, is sticking to its 3.0 million arrivals target for 2025, the first time if achieved and to generate US $ 5.0 billion.
The island nation has been featured among top destinations for travel in 2025 by global publications, making Sri Lanka a preferred choice among the visitors around the world.
Further, the much awaited global tourism promotion campaign is set to go under from the end of April which will also mark a strategic shift from traditional marketing to a comprehensive nation building initiative that highlights the country’s diverse economic and cultural strengths.
The promotional campaign will help prop up arrivals in the ongoing off-season and will take a holistic approach which will highlight tea, apparel and cricket as part of Sri Lanka tourism under a unified national brand identity.
The first of such initiatives will get underway from the middle of this month by holding a nation branding  conference to collect stakeholder feedback before finalizing the brand identity.
From an economic point of view, Sri Lanka tourism offers the much needed external sector heft after remittances and garments.
The near absence of the tourism trade in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic and the delay in recovery in 2022 due to the economic and social unrest was a leading cause for the currency shortage which then caused the economic crisis.
Since then tourism  has been on a steady recovery providing much needed bulwark to the country’s balance of payment and thereby the broader economy.