Sri Lanka received over 200,000 tourists in December alone, Tourism Minister Harin Fernando said in a post on the social media platform X.
He said that this is the highest number of monthly tourist arrivals the country has recorded during the past four years.
Figures in the weekly summary report published earlier by Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) stated that 1,476,951 tourists visited Sri Lanka between December 1 and 28.
The total number of tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka between January 1 and December 28 currently stands at almost 1.5 million – 1,466,556.
The Tourism Minister said the original target the Government had set in January was to reach 1.5 million tourist arrivals by the end of 2023.
Sri Lanka recorded 719,978 tourist arrivals in crisis-hit 2022.
Sri Lanka has unveiled plans to roll out its global tourism marketing campaign urging tourists “You’ll Come Back For More,” marking the first such campaign since 2007.
The new campaign is set to unfold in phases, initially focusing on communicating the restoration of stability in the country and its readiness to welcome tourists, this will run through February. Subsequent stages will elaborate on the central theme of “You’ll come back for more,” targeting key source markets of Sri Lanka Tourism.
Ogilvy, the creative agency behind the campaign, based its strategy on insights revealing that over 30 percent of tourists visiting Sri Lanka are repeat travellers.
According to the latest tourism data, Sri Lanka had welcomed 1.3 million tourists by November, with India leading as the largest contributor with almost 260,000 arrivals, followed by Russia with 168,000 tourists. The country plans to welcome 2.5 million tourists next year.
As part of a broader strategy to rejuvenate the tourism sector and achieve a target of 5 million arrivals by 2026, Sri Lanka will issue free tourist visas until March for visitors from seven countries
— India, China, Russia, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
