Tourism earnings on a tear as healthy arrivals power incomes

• March earnings up 79% YoY
• Tourism earnings cross US$ 1 bn mark in 1Q24

Reflecting what the Sri Lankan tourism trade could deliver in normal times when there are no pandemics or mass scale public protests as in 2022, the industry churned out back-to-back high foreign earnings exceeding US$ 300 million.

According to data, the tourism trade generated US$ 338.4 million for March compared to US$ 188.8 million a year ago and US$ 345.7 million a month before.

On a cumulative basis, in the first three months,  earnings were recorded at US$ 1,025.9 million, more than double from the same period a year ago.

In March, Sri Lanka saw 209,181 visitors coming in with the first three months’ arrivals topping 635,784 million.

Sri Lanka for 2024 targets 2.3 million visitors to generate roughly US$ 4.0 billion earnings.

In 2023, the country saw little over 1.4 million arrivals generating a little over US$ 2.0 billion.

Global travel and tourism industry has already reached pre-pandemic levels while the industry globally sees healthy growth as air lines are scrambling to add capacity.

Sri Lanka is expected to benefit from these positive travel trends as it has been listed as one of the most prominent and favoured destinations for travel in 2024 by multiple global travel publications.
At the same time, the industry has also begun running campaigns in select source markets to woo travellers into Sri Lanka.

These current leisure sector developments provide the opportunity for local industries to make the most of the current uptrend and to generate returns which they could not do for about three to four years.
Further, it also opens up investment opportunities for the leisure sector to ratchet up their infrastructure and add room capacity which is running short by large margins considering the arrivals.

The end of the three decade old war back in 2009 gave rise to what was seen as the highest investments in the trade adding capacity to cater to the sharply rising arrivals estimated at the time, and the 2015 political change threw a massive set back before the biggest national security failure led to Easter Attacks in 2019 throwing a wrench into the industry.   

While the low average daily spend has been a concern to the tourism sector, it appears that they are also taking certain measures to improve and diversity activities to make them spend more in the country.