Sri Lankan tourism sector is still struggling due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the island nation received the highest number of foreign tourists in December 2021, with bulk of the tourists coming from India.
Despite the closure of the islands’ borders during the health crisis, 194,495 tourists arrived in the island nation, with more than one-fourth of them coming from India, according to the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA).
The SLTDA said that India topped the list with 56,268 tourists, followed by Russia (16,268) and the UK (16,646), Germany (12,442), Ukraine (7,037), France (6,549), the US (6,124), Kazakhstan (5,754), Canada (5,079) and China (2,417).
After witnessing two Covid-19 waves, Sri Lanka’s tourism was further ravaged by the third wave of the pandemic in April 2021.
However, one of the top tourist destinations in the world, Sri Lanka gradually opened for tourists and a number of attractive promotions were introduced in connection.
To get more visitors from the neighbouring nation, flag carrier SriLankan Airlines launched a ‘Buy One, Get One Free Ticket’ campaign for Indian tourists. The airlines also started several weekly flights to Chennai and Mumbai, while operations commenced to Bengaluru, Madurai, Tiruchirappalli, Trivandrum, and Cochin.
After opening its borders to fully vaccinated travellers in August 2021, the country removed the mandatory on-arrival PCR test the following month.
Sri Lanka’s tourism sector, the third highest foreign income generator to the country , suffered a huge blow with the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks and obviously with covid-19.
The country which was recognized as Lonely Planet’s number 1 travel destination in October 2019 was planning to attract 2.5 million tourists compared to its 2018 figure 2.3 million. Sri Lanka recorded over 1.9 million tourist arrivals in 2019 earning around $3.5 billion.
As the pandemic raged, the sector suffered further losses in 2020, with the figure plummeting to 570,000.