Tourism arrivals: Near 40% growth in October points to busy winter

Saturday, 20 November 2010 00:33 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

By Cheranka Mendis

Keeping the upward trend on track, Sri Lanka Tourism statistics out this week showed yet another positive increase in arrivals in the month of October.

With an increase of 39.4 per cent recorded, a total of 52,370 arrived in Sri Lanka in October, while only 37, 575 arrived in October 2009.

From the data collected, tourist arrivals during the period of January to October stands at 497,598 – a 43.5 per cent increase from the same period last year, which recorded only arrivals numbering 346,717.

The increase also indicates that by now Sri Lanka has surpassed the 2009 total tourist arrivals by 49,708 by October alone.

To surpass the initial expected 2010 figure of 575,000 only 77,402 more tourists are needed.

However, with the encouraging tourist arrivals recorded, the authorities stated that even 600,000 tourist arrivals could be reached within the year; to reach that amount another 102,402 arrivals must be attracted within the months of November and December this year. In October the largest number of tourists flew in from neighbouring India (13,237), followed by UK and Germany.

Region wise, the largest tourist group was from Western Europe with South Asia and Middle East tagging behind. The lowest number of tourists was recorded from South Africa, where only 59 made their way across to Sri Lanka. France, which was also recorded as one of the lowest in the tourism business, had

sent only 90.