Lanka sees 11.6% increase in tourist arrivals

Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals rose 11.6% in April to 136,367, from the previous year, figures from the Tourism Promotion Bureau have showed.India remained the top market with 25,890 travellers, a 12.3-percent growth from the previous year, Xinhua news agency reported.China came second with 18,972 travellers, a 37.6% increase from the same period last year.Visitors from Japan increased 25% to 3,172. Western European arrivals were up 12.2% to 39,243, with Britain’s arrivals up 6.9% to 12,006.From January to April, 721,185 tourists have visited Sri Lanka. The government expects the year to end with a larger number than the previous year.The Sri Lankan government has been trying to promote the island nation as a tourist hub with mega tourism promotion campaigns launched worldwide.The tourism industry has seen an upward trend since the end of the civil war in May 2009.The Sri Lankan government hopes to attract at least threemn tourists by the end of this year and it has set a target of 4mn by 2020. Lanka tourism revenue surges eightfold after end of civil warSri Lanka’s revenue from tourism rose to $2.98bn from $349mn over the last six years after the island nation’s 26-year-old civil war ended in 2009.In 2009, 448,000 lakh tourists arrived in Sri Lanka and the numbers rose to 1.79mn in 2015, according to the 2015 Annual Report of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL). Foreign exchange earnings from tourism ranked third, next to workers’ remittances and income from garment exports.“The tourism industry is blooming in the Eastern and Northern provinces of the country,” the two regions hit hard by the strife. Seventy-four tourism development projects including 56 in the East were completed in the past six years, according to the report.An official in Jaffna said if the Palaly airport in Jaffna resumed flight services to Tiruchi, following the completion of the proposed modernisation with the technical and financial support of the Indian government, it would also result in greater tourist arrivals from India, especially central and southern parts of Tamil Nadu.Tourist arrivals in 2015 recorded a 17.8% increase over the previous year and 2015 revenue increased by 22.6%.Though India remained as the leading country of tourist origin with 316,000 lakh arrivals, tourists from China are evincing greater interest in Sri Lanka. Last year, the growth rate of Chinese tourists was 67.6% with 215,000 lakh tourists visiting the country. However, in terms of regions, Western Europe continued to be the largest tourist origin with 552,000 tourists.“The travel and tourism’s direct and total contribution to both the Gross Domestic Product and employment of Sri Lanka is comparatively lower than regional competitors such as Maldives, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia,” according to the report.