August tourist arrivals fall furthest away from forecast

 Tourists queue at Bandaranaike International Airport to obtain on-arrival visa

•  August tourist arrivals up 20.7% YoY
•  Fail to cross 200,000 mark and forecast of 202,907
•  Daily arrival average dropped in latter part of month
•  Cumulative tourist arrivals reach 1.36mn
•  India, UK and China rank as top three tourist traffic generators for month

By Nishel Fernando

The tourist arrivals in August fell furthest away from the target seen so far during the year, according to the provisional data released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority.

In August, the tourist arrivals rose by 20.7 percent year-on-year (YoY) to 164,609 arrivals. However, it fell short of 38,298 arrivals to reach the forecasted 202,907 arrivals for the month. This was the largest shortfall seen so far during the year. Earlier, the largest shortfall of 35,225 arrivals recorded in June, at the height of the visa fiasco.  

During the first two week of August, there was a healthy daily arrival rate, averaging to 6,545 per day. However, this trend drastically changed in the last two weeks, hitting a rock bottom of 2,804 arrivals on August 28.

Consequently, the daily arrival average stood at 5,310 per day in August, compared to the 6,058 daily average recorded in July. 

India continued to account for the largest source of arrivals in the month, with 33,031 arrivals, followed by 17,587 and 11,333 arrivals from the UK and China. Germany and Italy occupied the fourth and fifth positions accordingly. Meanwhile, Russia returned to the top 10 list, with 4,351 arrivals.

The cumulative tourist arrivals reached 1,362,668 tourists, recording a shortfall of 240,293 arrivals to reach 2.36 million tourist arrivals by the end of this year.

India took the top spot with 258,672 and the UK overtook Russia as the second largest source market for the first time this year, with 127,776 arrivals. Russia fell to the third spot, with 123,033 arrivals.

Sri Lanka’s tourism authorities remain confident of achieving over one million tourists in the next few months, particularly during the October-December period, in order to meet the 2.3 million tourist arrival target set for the year.