Sri Lanka welcomed 11,093 tourists for the first nine days of October, showing a slight improvement in the rate of arrivals compared with the month of September.
The provisional data released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLDTA) showed that with the October tourist arrivals so far, the total number of international visitors entering the country since January 1 has reached 537,325. The daily arrival average for the month of October for the first nine days is 1,232, which is significantly higher than the daily arrival average of September, which was 1,198.
India maintained its position as the most prominent tourist traffic generator. For the October 1 to 9 period, the country accounted for 2,340 total arrivals. The Russian Federation is back on the list and ranks as the second largest source market for Sri Lanka tourism by bringing in 1,307 international visitors. For several months Sri Lanka saw tourist arrivals from Russia fall, due to the ongoing conflict it has with Ukraine. Ukraine, an emerging source market for destination Sri Lanka, is now entirely off the list. Raking third is the United Kingdom, which accounted for 1,015 of the total arrivals for the month. Other notable markets include Germany, the Maldives and Australia. Sri Lanka is aiming to close the year 2022 with one million tourists. Though not officially revised downwards, Tourism Minister Harin Fernando said he expected the year would end with about 800,000 tourist arrivals, given the current scenario.
“As per the projections of the SLTDA, we expect at least 300,000 tourists to visit Sri Lanka in the coming three months,” he said, addressing journalists in Colombo last week. The tourism sector is expected to generate revenue amounting to US $ 1.7 billion in 2022. As per the latest data released by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, for the first nine months of the year, a total of US $ 946.4 million in revenue was generated. For the month of September, the earnings from tourism amounted to US $ 53.6 million.
