Year on year tourist arrivals show decline : Increasing trends month on month

COLOMBO (News 1st):- The number of tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka declined for the sixth straight month in September 2019, falling by 27.2 % in comparison to September of last year. According to the latest data from the Tourism Ministry, the total number of international tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka in September was 108,575. In comparison to the 149,087 arrived in September 2018. However, tourist arrivals have been gradually rising following the April 21st attacks this year. Year-on-Year tourist arrivals declined 28% in August, 46% in July, 57% in June and 70.8% in May this year. Tourist arrivals during the first quarter of this year amounted to 907,575, a 2.2 % increase when compared with the 1st quarter of last year. According to the latest statistics, the most popular place of attraction within Sri Lanka was Colombo city with Kandy and Galle as the second and third places respectively. This month, the largest source market for tourists was India, followed by China and the United Kingdom. Chairman of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, Kishu Gomes addressing the issue says;

Sri Lanka Tourism and Sri Lanka Foreign Ministry and all the other stakeholders have been working together to try and re-instill confidence in the minds of the travelers. Globally the response was very good and they all extended their solidarity and we have had various engagements with various countries and stakeholders and as a result of which, within a very short time we have been able to reverse the trend of decline to decent recovery. It has taken 13 months for any country to recover. In our case, just over 6 months time we have been able to recover to this extent but having said that we have a long way to go. So we have selected 13 markets to carry out an integrated marketing communication campaign and put in greater sales efforts and we are also working with other travel agents in these countries to try and bring the numbers back. So from next year, we will also appoint a global advertising agency who will work with us on a strategic partnership and together with them we will certainly build our strategy that can take us to the level we want to be in the next 3 years.