Jan. tourist arrivals down 8% from Dec. 2021

• A total of 82,327 tourists visited SL in Jan.
• An average of 2,655 tourists entered the country last 31 days
• Russia, India, and Ukraine emerge as top3 source markets

Tourist arrivals to the country contracted from the numbers achieved in December despite several promotional efforts taken up by tourism authorities to promote destination Sri Lanka.
According to the data released by the Tourism Ministry, a total of 82,327 tourists visited Sri Lanka in January, down 8 percent from December 2021.
In December, Sri Lanka welcomed a total of 89,506 tourists, which is the highest number of arrivals achieved since the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020.
The daily arrivals number shared by the Tourism Ministry showed that Sri Lanka welcomed an average of 2,655 tourists per day in the last 31 days.
Russia emerged as the largest tourist traffic generator accounting for 13.4 percent (13,478) of the total arrivals to the country.
The second largest source market for Sri Lanka was India, accounting for 14.2 percent (11,751), whereas Ukraine was the third largest contributing 9.4 percent (7,774) to the total tourist traffic.
Germany and France ranked as the fourth and fifth largest source markets with 7,442, and 5,339 arrivals.
With the January 2022 numbers, Sri Lanka failed to meet the 100,000 arrivals target set for the month.

 Speaking to Mirror Business, Tourism Ministry sources said the industry fell behind reaching the monthly target in January due to the spread of the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, across the world, which is hampering global travel.
However, the Tourism Ministry expressed confidence in the arrival numbers increasing and the hard-hit tourism sector recovering in the coming months.
This month, the Tourism Ministry shared the monthly arrivals number before the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA).
The monthly arrivals report is compiled by STLDA with assistance from the Australia Market Development Fund (MDF).
The objective of assistance from the MDF was to enable STLDA capture tourism related data so that more informed and meaningful decisions can be made going forward.