Saturday, 8 February 2014 04:05
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First month of the New Year heralds record arrivals of 146,575; up 32.6% from a year earlier
Sri Lanka’s tourism industry had begun 2014 with double digit growth with arrivals in January recording a 32.6% increase to 146,575.
This is the highest ever arrivals figure for the month of January whilst the achievement is also comes on the back of all time high arrivals of 154,000 in December 2013.
The traditional market – Western Europe produced the most number of tourists with 46,301, reflecting an 18% growth year on year. UK led the pack with 12,896 arrivals, up by 13.6% followed by Germany 9,211, a growth of 16.7%. France brought in 8,430 tourists, up sharply by 33.6% over January last year. All major Western European source markets recorded double digit growth except Netherlands, arrivals from where were down by 3% whilst Switzerland produced a 7% growth in arrivals.
Second highest visitors came from South Asia amounting to 28,392 up by 14.6% with India accounting for 17,886, up by 5.6%.
East Asia emerged third largest source market with 25,823 tourists, up by a whopping 95.6%. China led the way with 10,779 arrivals, a growth of 224% from a low base a year earlier. There were 2,859 Japanese tourists in January 2014, up by a healthy 52% whilst Malaysia produced 2,059 tourists up by 64%.
Eastern Europe, an emerging source market for Sri Lanka brought in 24,837 tourists reflecting a healthy 63.6%. There were 10,700 Russians, up by 91.6% and 6,424 Ukrainians, up by 21%.
The Middle East produced 6,842 tourists, reflecting a 10% increase over January last year.
Arrivals from North America grew by 22.4% to 6,909 whilst Australasia recorded a 15% growth to 6,210 tourists.
Sri Lanka achieved its highest ever tourist arrivals of 1.274 million in 2013, up from 1.005 million in the previous year. Since the end of the conflict in May 2009, tourist arrivals have remained on the up and analysts welcomed the January data most of which reflect double digit growth from a growing base.
