Sri Lanka tourist arrivals picking up; recovery is over 40% from June to July – Kishu

July, 11, 2019

Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau Kishu Gomes says that Sri Lanka is experiencing new record of tourist arrivals.

“The average tourist arrival in May was 1200 but by June we managed to take the numbers up to 2200.  If you look at the rate of recovery it is about 66% month on month basis. July month-to-date for the first 7 days the average number has risen to 3200.  From June to July the recovery is over 40%.” Gomes said whilst addressing an event in Colombo yesterday.

“If you ask me can we be happy with the progress we been able to achieve, I will say yes.” He added.

Emphasizing about the importance of boosting the tourism sector within the country, Gomes noted that the impact of tourism in the global economy is significant.

“Central bank has been saying, that direct and indirect employment number is around 400,000, the moment the tourism industry was hit by this incident we saw the number of lives that got negatively impacted, and you know and I know, the number is millions not just 400,000 as claimed by the central bank and that goes to show that without tourism there is no way that our economy can survive, economy can progress.”

“Size of the tourism industry in terms of value is 4.5 billion, the revenue we earn out of tourism during 2018, surely it has the potential to go up to about 10 billion over the next 4 to 5 years” he added.