SL ranked at 76th spot in Travel and Tourism Development Index 2024

Sri Lanka is ranked at the 76th spot in Travel and Tourism Development Index 2024 (TTDI), as the country scored poorly in the tourism services and infrastructure, cultural resources and non-leisure resources categories. 

The TTDI is a biennial report published by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with the University of Surrey. It measures the set of factors and policies that enable the sustainable and resilient development of the T&T sector, which in turn contributes to the development of a country.

In the 2024 TTDI, Sri Lanka recorded a score of 3.69, maintaining its 2019 score. However, it fell one spot in ranking to the 76th spot, among 119 countries. The country was also 6.8 percent below the average score of 119 countries. 

In particular, Sri Lanka scored poorly in the tourism services and infrastructure, cultural resources and non-leisure resources categories, while scoring high in price competitiveness and travel and tourism socioeconomic impact. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka’s competitors such as Vietnam (59th), Thailand (47th), Indonesia (22nd) and Malaysia (35th) were ranked above Sri Lanka in the index. In addition, India (39th) topped the ranking in South Asia, followed by Sri Lanka. However, the Maldives wasn’t included in the index. Out of the top 30 index scorers in 2024, 26 are high-income economies, 19 are based in Europe, seven are in Asia-Pacific, three are in the Americas and one (the United Arab Emirates) is in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The top 10 countries in the 2024 edition are the United States, Spain, Japan, France, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, Italy and Switzerland.

The results highlight that the high-income economies generally continue to have more favourable conditions for travel and tourism development. This is helped by the conducive business environments, dynamic labour markets, open travel policies, strong transport and tourism infrastructure and well-developed natural, cultural and non-leisure attractions.

Nevertheless, the developing countries have seen some of the greatest improvements in recent years. Among the upper-middle-income economies, China has cemented its ranking among the top 10. The major emerging travel and tourism destinations of Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey have joined China in the top quartile of the rankings. More broadly, the low to upper-middle-income economies account for over 70 percent of countries that have improved their scores since 2019, while MENA and sub-Saharan Africa are among the most improved regions. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the only high-income economies to rank among the top 10 most improved economies between 2019 and 2024. Despite these strides, the TTDI warns that significant investment is needed to close gaps in enabling conditions and market share between the developing and high-income countries. One possible pathway to help achieve this would be sustainably leveraging natural and cultural assets, which are less correlated with the country income level than the other factors and can offer the developing economies an opportunity for tourism-led economic development.