SL must lure over 60,000 tourists to reach Jan. arrivals target

Sri Lanka will need to work towards attracting 60, 828 tourists in the coming two weeks to achieve the ambitious target of reaching 100,000 arrivals per month.

An update from the Tourism Ministry shared that Sri Lanka ended the first two weeks of January with a total of 39,172 tourists visiting the country.

Accordingly, 39 percent of the January arrivals target has been met.

From the total arrivals within the first 14 days, Russia became the largest source market accounting for 17 percent of the total tourist traffic. A total of 6,963 visitors arrived from the federation during the said period.

Other nations that contributed to tourist arrivals include; India, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Maldives, Australia, Poland, and the USA.

The Ministry did not share in its weekly update the contribution in numbers made by other leading tourism source markets.

The Ministry together with the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) is working towards a target of attracting 2.3 million arrivals by end 2022.

In an effort to increase arrivals and assist the hard hit tourism sector revive from the impacts faced in the last three years, Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga has assured stakeholders that a series of special promotional programmes will be implemented.

Efforts are underway to launch the much-awaited Global Communication Promotion Programme within the first quarter of 2022 (1Q22), Ranatunga said in a statement over the weekend.

 Sri Lanka will also participate in several international tourism exhibitions where market specific promotional programmes are planned to be launched.