March tourist arrivals up 21%

Tourist arrivals for the month of March rose 21.3 percent year-on-year to 91, 102, the official data released by Sri Lanka Tourism showed.
Majority of the visitors who came to the country were from Western Europe. Accordingly, the arrivals from Western Europe rose 35.6 percent year-on-year to 40, 686.
Visitors from Eastern Europe also rose 60 percent year-on-year to 7, 882. Tourists from Russia increased 56.7 percent year-on-year to 2, 998.
Arrivals from South Asian region however fell 7.3 percent year-on-year to19,516.

Nevertheless, arrivals from India remained positive, recording a 2.1 percent improvement year-on-year, with 13,908 visitors from the country, as compared with the 13,619 recorded arrivals in the previous year. Meanwhile, arrivals from the East Asian region rose 44.3 percent year-on-year to 10,148.
According to the official figures, tourist arrivals for the first three months of 2012 rose 21.1 percent to 260, 525 compared with the same period of the previous year.
Sri Lanka expects to attract 2.6 million tourists by 2016.