Sri Lanka hopes to attract over 900,000 tourists in 2022 says SLTDA.
The Morning: Sri Lanka hopes to attract over 900,000 tourists by the end of this year, as the country works toward restoring normalcy following recent economic and political instability, the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) said.
SLTDA Chairperson Priantha Fernando said in a statement that Sri Lanka aims to attract at least 972,475 tourists by the end of 2022. “We are not happy with the tourist arrival figures over the last nine months. It is a gradual build-up, fighting against the negativity,” Fernando said, adding: “However efforts are being taken to increase the influx of international visitors for the number of arrivals in the remaining months of the year.”
Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals faced a drastic drop in September when only 29,802 visitors entered the country despite the relaxation of travel restrictions imposed by key source markets.
According to industry experts, the country is well behind its competitors in the region in its tourism sector recovery. Competing nations such as the Maldives have been welcoming well over 100,000 tourists on a monthly basis for the past several months, while tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka have been ranging from 30,000 to 60,000, official statistics have shown.
Tourism, one of Sri Lanka’s leading foreign exchange earners, has suffered a setback due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the country’s ongoing economic and political crises.
OSL take:
Sri Lanka’s tourism authorities are confident of the country’s tourism industry witnessing a steady growth in the next few months to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2023. Nevertheless, there has been an interest expressed by several international leisure and hospitality brands to enter the Sri Lankan tourism industry. Apart from a steady growth in tourist arrivals to the country, Sri Lanka is also looking at an increase in business travelers to the country with Sri Lanka’s move towards becoming an emerging business destination in the South Asian region. With the growing business potential in Sri Lanka’s, foreign businesses/investors could confidently explore the growth and business potential in the country’s tourism industry, especially in the leisure and hospitality sectors as well as in the field of developing supplementary infrastructure facilities in the industry.
| Article Code : | VBS/AT/11102022/X_2 |