Wednesday Sep 10, 2025
Wednesday Sep 10, 2025
Tuesday, 9 September 2025 02:39 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Smiling tourists arriving at the Bandaranaike International Airport
Sri Lanka’s tourism sector has registered nearly 37,500 arrivals in the first week of September, surpassing 1.6 million visitors so far in 2025—a milestone reached a month earlier than last year.
Tourism stakeholders view the 1.6 million milestone as a confidence booster for the industry, which is targeting 3 million arrivals by the end of 2025.
With half of the year’s target already achieved in just over nine months, they insist that the momentum in the coming peak season will be crucial to meeting these ambitious goals.
During the first week of September, Sri Lanka welcomed 37,495 visitors, reflecting a 28.23% year-on-year (YoY) increase, whilst the weekly average was up from 4,177 in September 2024 to 5,356 in September 2025.
The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) projects 185,043 visitors for September 2025. However, the industry is of the view that the target is too ambitious as it is a traditionally slow month, predicting that it would only cross 100,000 if the momentum continues. The month-to-month figures also indicate that tourist arrivals consistently fell short of the SLTDA’s ambitious projections throughout the first eight months of the year.
India continued to dominate as the top source market, contributing 10,171 arrivals (27.1%) during the first seven days of September. The UK followed with 3,033 arrivals, while Germany surged to third place with 2,426 arrivals. Austria and China rounded off the top five markets for the month so far.
On a year-to-date (YTD) basis, India leads with 335,766 arrivals, followed by the UK (154,174), Russia (119,592), Germany (100,070), and China (92,866).
Although the numbers show momentum, resilience, and potential, they opined that the policy vacuum, delayed free-visa reform implementation, and absent global marketing threaten to derail the country’s most ambitious targets in a decade.
The industry has cautioned that meeting the ambitious 2025 targets of $ 5 billion in revenue and 3 million arrivals may prove difficult. Sri Lanka needs to attract over 1.39 million more international tourists to achieve the 3 million arrivals target and generate over $ 2.9 billion representing nearly 60% of the $ 5 billion annual revenue target within the remaining four months.
