Sri Lanka Aug tourist arrivals up 18.7 pct, China and India drive growth

Sep 04, 2015 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals rose 18.7 percent to 166,610 in August 2015 from a year earlier, driven by China and India, data from the state tourism promotion office showed. In the eight months of 2015 arrivals were up 17.1 percent to 1,172,465. Indian arrivals increased 27.9 percent to 151,427 while China visitors up 76.8 percent to 81,682 for the eight months in 2015 compared to the corresponding months 2014. Middle Eastern visitors were down 17.5 percent to 15,523 with arrivals from Saudi Arabis down 22.7 percent to 5,145 and UAE down 14.3 percent to 2,186, Oman down 16.2 percent to 3,228. Sri Lanka targets 2.5 million tourist arrivals for the year 2016 and tourism promotion is aggressively campaigning to get more arrivals to the Indian Ocean Island. South Asian visitors were up 33.3 percent to 34,912 compared to the same month last year with arrivals from India, Sri Lanka top market, up 31.4 percent to 23,540. Visitors from Maldives were up 19.4 percent to 7,036 and Pakistan was also up 65.2 percent to 2,807. East Asian visitors were up 39.1 percent to 37,583 with arrivals from China up 73.3 percent to 24,734. Malaysian visitors were up 12.8 percent to 1,740, Japanese were down 8.0 percent to 4,814 and Indonesia was down 42.3 percent to 429 in 2015 compared to the same month last year. Visitors from Western Europe were up 15.8 percent 55,868 in the month with UK up 15.3 percent to 17,908 and Germany up 5.3 percent to 10,913. Eastern European arrivals were up 19.4 percent to 8,333 with Russia up 3.9 percent to 3,332, Ukraine also was up 51.2 percent to 1,677.