Tourist visits to country booming

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Tops 210,000 in 26 days:

Daily arrivals average 7,500:

Sri Lanka Tourism recorded a major milestone in the first 26 days of 2025 by attracting 212,838 visitors. This number surpasses the total arrival figure of January 2024 which was 208,253.

The first 26 days arrival mark also betters monthly income figures from February to June and also September and October last year.

The country also averaged around 7,500 daily arrivals in January 2025.

With free visa on arrival, good connectivity with short flying time India was the best tourism source market for Sri Lanka with 37,383 arrivals. This was 17.6% of the total number of arrivals.

The Russian Federation was second (29,266-13.8%) while the United Kingdom (18,036-8.5%) Germany (12,663-5.9%) and (China 12,496 5.9%) were the third, fourth and fifth best markets for Sri Lanka Tourism.

Following this pattern, India was the best market for Sri Lanka from January 1 to 14, 2025, with 19,353 and an average of 17.2%. The Russian Federation with 17,225 (15.3%), United Kingdom 9,178 (8.2%) and Germany 7,455 (6.6%) were second, third and fourth.

The government is targeting 2.5 million arrivals and making 2025 the best year for tourism in the country’s history erasing the previous best of 2,333,796 achieved in 2018 after ending hostilities with LTTE.

Chinese arrivals which were among the top two before the COVID pandemic too are expected to pick up after their Chinese New Year celebrations and observers say the recent visit by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake gave a free destination marketing campaign boost for Sri Lanka tourism.

Several new airlines from China are to fly to Colombo while existing airlines including Sri Lankan are scheduled to increase capacity and add new destinations in China this year.

Shirajiv Sirimane

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