Over 184,000 tourist arrivals in Nov.
Sri Lanka tourist arrivals for the month of November 2024 stood at 184,158 and the yearly arrivals till end of November stood at 1,804,873.
With the country averaging around 7,500 to 8, 000 plus arrivals per day Sri Lanka will pass the 2 million targeted arrival mark for 2024 falling short of the 2,333,796 arrival figure mark recorded in 2018 which stands as the best year for the industry.
Meanwhile, tourist earnings were estimated at USD 2,534 million during January to October 2024 compared to USD 1,593 million during January to October 2023. Many say that the adhoc travel advisory imposed by a Western country on an incident in Arugam bay targeting Israeli tourists had a very negative impact on the industry. In addition, the previous VFS visa issues imposed by the previous regime too, affected the arrival flow. The slow increase of Chinese arrivals too, negatively impacted the local arrivals.
Asked to comment on this by ‘Daily News Business’ China’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Qi Zhenhong during a meeting with a group of journalists at the Embassy on Thursday said that the manner in which the previous government cold shouldered a Chinese Scientific vessel that wanted to do research in Sri Lankan Waters too had a negative impact towards Chinese arrivals.
“This incident was portrayed highly in Chinese society as well as the mainstream media and created some suspicion among Chinese travelers towards Sri Lanka. “This is one reason for our arrival to drop from the top three to fifth place.”
Top sourcing destinations for Sri Lanka tourism in November were India (41,120, share 22.3%), Russian Federation (29,053 – 15.8%) United Kingdom (12,912- 7.%) and Germany (12,593 – 6.8%).
Top five markets to send more than 100,000 tourists to Sri Lanka from January to November 2024 were India with 364,093 followed by Russian Federation (166,652), United Kingdom (159,582), Germany (121,381) and China (113,687).
The post Over 184,000 tourist arrivals in Nov. appeared first on DailyNews.