Sri Lanka tourist arrivals up 20.4 pct in November 2015
Dec 04, 2015 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals rose 20.4 percent to 144,147 in the month of November 2015 from a year earlier, driven by China, India, United Kingdom and Germany, data from the state tourism promotion office showed.
In the eleven months of 2015 arrivals were up 18.1 percent to 1,592,266.
South Asian visitors were up 32.7 percent to 41,318 compared to the same month last year supported by arrivals from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
India, Sri Lanka top market was up by 48.4 percent to 29,329.
Visitors from Maldives were down 1.7 percent to 8,190 and Pakistan was up 11.6 percent to 2,030.
East Asian visitors were up 30.9 percent to 28,017 with arrivals from China up 54.4 percent to 16,830.
In the eleven months to November, visitors from China were up 31.4 percent to 330,119 compared to 143,083 from Britain up 11.6 percent.
Malaysian visitors were up 13.2 percent to 2,285, Japanese were down 0.2 percent to 2,514 and Indonesia was also down 8.9 percent to 522 compared to the same month last year.
Visitors from Western Europe were up 11.4 percent 40,006 in the month with UK up 0.9 percent to 10,822 and Germany up 11.6 percent to 10,103.
Eastern European arrivals were up 8.5 percent to 17,199 with Russia up 1.1 percent to 7,360, Ukraine also was up 8.4 percent to 2,876.
Middle Eastern visitors were up 11.1 percent to 4,807 with arrivals from Saudi Arabis down 4.9 percent to 1,263 and UAE up 90 percent to 682 but Kuwait was down 20.6 percent to 223.
They used to publish tourist earnings in US$m in parallel. This is a better indicator than just numbers, because diaspora staying with family and friends have a much lower spend (in general).