(COLOMBO, LANKAPUVATH) – Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals rose 19.0 percent in June this year compared to the same period last year, the data released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) showed.
The month recorded 146,828 tourists arriving in the country compared to the 123,351 arrived in June 2017.
As at 30th June, 1,164,647 tourists had visited Sri Lanka for this year. It is a 15.3 percent growth over last year when 1,010,444 tourists had visited the country during the same period.
Asia and Pacific continued to be the largest source of tourist traffic to Sri Lanka with 58 percent of the total traffic received in June 2018. Europe accounted for 28 percent of the total traffic, America 7 percent, Middle East 6 percent and Africa 1.0 percent.
India, China, United Kingdom, Australia and Germany were Sri Lanka�s top five international tourist generating markets in the month of June this year. India was the largest source of tourist traffic to Sri Lanka with 22 percent of the total traffic received in June 2018. China accounted for 14 percent of the total traffic, while United Kingdom, Australia and Germany accounted for 8 percent, 7 percent and 4 percent respectively.
Arrivals from North America rose 12.7 percent to 8,619 in June and the arrivals from US rose 18.5 percent to 4,200 during the month while arrivals from Canada were up by 7.6 percent.
Tourist arrivals from Europe increased by 10.3 percent with the arrival of 41,533 tourists. Most of the tourists came from UK (12,104), followed by Germany (5,792), France (3,688), and Norway (2,272).
Tourist arrivals from Middle East increased 104.9 percent with the arrival of 8,433 visitors compared to the 4,115 arrived in June 2017.
Tourist arrivals from Asia & Pacific increased by 19.5 percent with 85,852 arriving in the island. Of those arrived from Asia, 32,971 were from India corresponding to an increase of 18.4 percent. Arrivals from Australia recorded 57.2 percent increase in arrivals with 9,997 visitors while arrivals from China increased by 18.7 percent with 20,424 visitors.
Over 2.1 million tourists arrived in Sri Lanka in 2017 contributing US$ 3.9 billion of earnings to the government revenues.
