Tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka up 6-pct in July 2018

Aug 07, 2018 (LBO) - Tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka were up six percent to 217,829 in July 2018 from a year earlier, with double digit growth in the largest source market, India, official data shows. As at 31 st July 2018, 1,382,476 tourists had visited Sri Lanka for this year, a 13.7 percent growth over last year when 1,215,926 tourists had visited the country during the same period. India, China, United Kingdom, Netherlands and France were Sri Lanka’s top five international tourist generating markets in the month of July this year. India was the largest source of tourist traffic to Sri Lanka with 14 percent of the total traffic received in July 2018. China accounted for 13 percent while United Kingdom, Netherlands and France accounted for 12 percent, 6 percent and 5 percent respectively. Europe continued to be the largest source of tourist traffic to Sri Lanka with 44 percent of the total traffic received in July 2018. Asia and Pacific accounted for 42 percent of the total traffic, Middle East 7 percent, America 6 percent and Africa 0.5 percent. Almost 99 percent of tourists travelled by air to Sri Lanka.