Tuesday, December 19, 2023
Tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka met with a drastic drop after 2019. It happened after bombings in three luxury hotels and three churches on Easter. The incident killed more than 250 people.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit before Sri Lanka had a chance to recover.
In 2022, there was economic and political turmoil. It further pushed tourists away from Sri Lanka.
But a concerted promotional drive to attract foreign visitors appears to finally be bearing fruit.
In 2023, Sri Lanka recorded more than 1.3 million tourist arrivals by the second week of December, official data show.
It is the first time arrivals have crossed the 1 million mark in four years.
More than 150,000 tourists visited in November, the highest monthly tally since March 2020.
Most tourists who have visited this year are from India. They hosted three roadshows promoting Sri Lanka’s tourism sector in April.
But the Russian war in Ukraine has helped Sri Lanka too. Russia is the second-highest source of tourists to the country this year. At this time Russian tourists are not welcome in many other nations.
Encouraging numbers, but higher revenue needed
Industry stakeholders say that while higher tourist arrivals are a positive sign, there is a need to attract high-spending tourists to generate more revenue for the economy.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe has also urged the tourism sector to improve its products and services to cater to high-end tourists.
From January to November, tourism contributed $1.8bn in revenue – an increase of 78 percent compared with the same period last year.
Tourism is Sri Lanka’s third-largest source of foreign exchange. On average, a tourist spends $181 daily, according to government data.
In 2021, the World Economic Forum ranked Sri Lanka 74th among 117 countries on its Travel and Tourism Development Index, which measures factors and policies that enable the development of the travel and tourism sector.
The tourism sector is also asking the government to provide relief on their mounting debt and the multiple electricity and water tariff hikes imposed since last year.
Tour operators and safari four-wheel drive drivers say they have to put up with old vehicles as the government banned vehicle imports in early 2020 to control dollar outflows.
Brain drain
The mass migration of Sri Lankans to other countries in search of jobs has also hurt the tourism industry.
More than 280,000 Sri Lankans, including 78,000 skilled workers and nearly 16,900 professionals, have migrated this year, according to figures obtained by a news agency and from the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.
Skilled workers make up less than 40 percent of the tourism sector, the Sri Lanka Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management (SLITHM), the capacity-building arm of Sri Lanka Tourism, has said.
‘Optimistic for 2024’
Still, a buoyant Sri Lankan tourism authority is targeting 2.3 million tourist arrivals and $4.6bn in revenue next year.
To achieve this, the country has launched its first global tourism marketing campaign in 16 years, under the tagline “You Will Come Back For More”.
In late October, the Sri Lanka government announced it will issue free tourist visas to visitors from seven countries, including China, India and Russia.
This initiative, launched as a pilot project, will run until March 31, 2024.
This convinced many tourists.
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