Over 25,000 tourist arrivals recorded in first 4 days of 2024

Sri Lanka has recorded over 25,000 tourist arrivals within the first 4 days of year, according to the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA).

Accordingly, a total of 25,619 tourist arrivals were recorded from 01 – 04 January, out of which 5,060 were identified as Russian nationals, while 3,333 were identified as Indian nationals.

While a majority of the tourists were identified as Russian and Indian nationals, Germans, Americans, British, Australians, Chinese, French and the Dutch tourists, too, were amongst those arrivals.

Sri Lanka saw the highest number of daily arrivals within those four days on Wednesday, January 03, which registered 7,251 tourist arrivals into the country. 

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka has been able to successfully close in on almost a quarter of the total number of arrivals recorded in January last year, within the first 04 days of this year.

As per the SLTDA’s data, 5,060 Russian tourists have amounted to nearly 20% of the total arrivals recorded within the first 04 days of January, while a total of 3,333 Indian nationals arrived in the country so far this year.

A significant number of tourist arrivals were also recorded from Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, China, France, the Netherlands, the United States and the Maldives, according to the SLTDA.

Sri Lanka recorded a total of 1,487,303 arrivals in 2023 seeing a tremendous improvement compared to 2022 where the figure stood at 719,978.

Sri Lanka barely missed its target of 1.5 million tourist arrivals in 2023, having recorded a total of 1,487,303 tourist arrivals. However, as per the SLTDA, they expect to see 2.3 million tourist arrivals within this year.