Sri Lanka’s post-war tourism is booming. In the first half of this year, a total of 452,867 people including 85,000 from India, visited the island nation, government data showed yesterday.This is an all-time high and an 18.7% growth over the same period last year, Xinhua reported.The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority said the highest number of tourists - 172,602 - in the first six months arrived from western Europe.Britain clocked the highest number of tourists at 47,975, followed by Germany with 32,081.Despite not having high numbers, the largest growth percentage-wise came from Spain. The percentage of Spanish tourists grew by an impressive 89.2% from 2,058 in 2011 to 3,894 this year.South Asia also remained a strong market with 116,717 arrivals.India continued to lead the number of regional travellers with 85,426 arrivals in the first half of the year.Maldives also showed a 6.7% growth with 20,602 tourists, the tourism authority said in its monthly bulletin. Tourists from East Asia grew 36.7% from 41,340 in 2011 to 56,497.The number of arrivals from Japan increased by 29.4% to 10,203, while China reached 9,622 arrivals posting a 11.7% increase from 8,613 in 2011.The Sri Lankan government has set an ambitious target of 1mn arrivals for 2012, and expects it to rise to 2.5mn by 2016. Around $2bn in earnings are also expected from the tourism industry this year. IANS