The tourism industry has been hard hit, following the first covid-19 outbreak in March 2020 in Sri Lanka. However the industry has been recovering gradually over the past few months. In April, the number of tourist visits were as follows:
- India (796)
- China (475)
- Kazakhstan (440)
- Germany (383)
- UK (334)
The main source of tourist traffic stood at 19%–from India,11.4% from China, 10.6% from Kazakhstan, 9.2% from Germany and tourist numbers from the United Kingdom stood at 8%.
Regionally tourist inflows were as follows
- Europe was the largest source region with 50.9% of the total traffic received in April.
- Asia and Pacific accounted for 35.7%
- The Americas accounted for 10%.
Thus over the past few months, the tourism industry has been gradually recovering from the slump experienced in 2020. However, the recent covid-19 outbreak in Sri Lanka as well as the global rise in those affected by covid-19, has resulted in a drop in tourist arrivals.In comparison to March, tourist arrivals fell by 9% (in April) to 4,168.
As per information released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), arrivals during the first four months also fell by 97.3% to 13,797 compared to the previous year.
