Sri Lanka Tourism says it received over 100,000 visitors in a month for the first time since the pandemic broke out two years ago. The island nation continues to witness strong recovery in overseas tourists and India comfortably retains its place as the largest source market. Sri Lanka Tourism says it expects over 1 million tourists in the current year, even on a conservative estimate.

The latest figures of tourist arrivals are bound to spread cheer in Colombo as Sri Lanka records 101,192 foreign tourist arrivals in the period March 1 – 29, 2022, making it the first time since end of 2019 that the country received over 100,000 foreign tourists.

The country’s foreign tourist traffic has risen rapidly from September of last year, with each month since then setting a new relative high since the outbreak of the pandemic. Until September, 2021, Sri Lanka had seen topsy turvy recovery, with arrivals increasing slowly up to April, before the Omicron scare sent the numbers plummeting again from 4581 in March 2021 to barely 1500 in May.

After a relatively calm June-July, the count rose exponentially from August, which saw just over 5000 tourists, that jumped to well over 13,500 in the following month, rising further to 22,771 in October, doubling in November to over 44,000 and again in December to 89,500.

The growth has continued, though at a more moderate pace from January-March, with January seeing 82,300 and February 96,500 foreign tourist arrivals and March going beyond the 100,000 mark. The total arrivals from January 1-March 29, 2022 stand at 280026, almost 44 pc more than the total arrivals in the entire 2021, when Sri Lanka received 194495 foreign tourists.

In a sign of consistent performance, that should come as a relief to the travel trade in Sri Lanka and to the Sri Lanka Tourism board, India remains the largest source market for Sri Lanka in the first 3 months of this year, just as for the past few years. Sri Lanka Tourism says that from March 1-29, a total of 22,231 tourists, almost 22 pc of the total arrivals in the country, hailed from India. The United Kingdom was next in line, way behind at just over 11,600, followed by Germany, Russia and France.

Performance beats expectations of tourism board

Kimarli Fernando, chairperson of Sri Lanka Tourism, tells India Outbound that the performance of the destination in the first three months exceeded the conservative estimate made by her team at the beginning of the year. As per Sri Lanka Tourism estimates, the destination was to get between 76454 and 108789 tourists in March alone and the performance has turned out to be very close to the upper end of the estimate and a good 40 pc more than the conservative estimate.

‘‘I expect tourism to continue to pull in large numbers and the growth witnessed in the first three months should continue for the rest of the current year. As per our expectations, the total foreign tourist arrivals in the year should range between 1.07 million and 1.34 million,’’ Fernando tells India Outbound.

In the best-case scenario, with 1.34 million visitors in 2022, Sri Lanka Tourism would have seen a multi-fold growth over the year 2021 when the total arrivals were barely 194495, a growth of almost 600 pc over the previous year. Going by the conservative estimate, the growth would still be impressive at 450 pc.

Fernando says she is confident of achieving the annual target of 1.34 million tourists in the year and that the achievement of the tourism board is a team-work. “We have faced the challenges by working closely with all stakeholders and we are appreciative of the support given by all the agencies and we believe that we will achieve the targets that has been set by us. I also want to thank the foreign ambassadors as well as international funding agencies for their support via grants as well as technical support as well as our missions overseas. It is a team effort of many stakeholders, from the hotels to tour operators and travel guides and most important to my team that has worked very long hours in a very challenging environment,” Fernando tells India Outbound.

Fernando adds that the work was not over and that the team and other stakeholders would need to continue to put in their best effort to meet the annual target. “While our team did not take its eyes off the ball throughout the period and while we can celebrate this achievement, there still remains a lot more to be done and I look to the team to continue to support us to achieve our target and contribute to the national economy,’’ says Fernando.