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1 m tourist target unlikely to be achieved

10 Apr 2022

The target of 1.1 million tourist arrivals set for 2022 is unlikely to be achieved if the current economic situation continues, says Ministry of Tourism and Aviation Services Secretary S. Hettiarachchi.  Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, Hettiarachchi stated that tourist arrivals had started to decline due to the present economic situation, as most tourists had rescheduled, postponed, or cancelled their reservations and bookings in Sri Lanka. He further noted that although there had been a historic trend of tourist arrivals reducing during April, the tourism industry had this time tried to avoid the seasonal pattern by targeting tourists from India, the Middle East, and Australia for the summer season, but they had been unable to continue this as planned.  “This is like the chicken and egg theory. If we can bring more tourists, we can get more foreign exchange to import essential goods, but until electricity, fuel, and gas are sorted out they will not come. It is very difficult to reach the target set for 2022,” Hettiarachchi said.  Former Minister of Finance Basil Rajapaksa had recently agreed to provide $ 56 million to promote Sri Lanka tourism by the second quarter of this year.  Commenting in this regard, Hettiarachchi stated that tourist campaigns had also been stopped amidst the current challenges and due to the unavailability of US Dollars in the market. “We want to get ready and once the situation is okay, we will start the global promotion. This is the strategy now. However, we are not doing many promotional campaigns at the moment,” Hettiarachchi told The Sunday Morning Business last month. This global campaign has been delayed for several years under two consecutive governments and impacted by the Easter Sunday bomb attacks and pandemic outbreak. The campaign was later scheduled to be launched in January 2021, however it was delayed further due to the authorities expressing concerns about reopening Sri Lanka to tourists.  Meanwhile, speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, AASL Chairman Major General (Retd.) G.A. Chandrasiri stated that even though there had been a reduction in tourist arrivals in the past few weeks, arrivals were not at a standstill and operations at Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) were therefore continuing as usual.  “There is a reduction of passengers from what it was five days ago but overall there is no halt in passenger movement. As of now, we have about 5,000 arrivals per day, the departure rate is about 7,000 passengers per day, and we have about 1,500 to 2,000 in transit,” Chandrasiri briefed.  Last month, he said that as of 17 March 2022, a total of 55,000 international tourists had visited Sri Lanka in March, with daily arrivals of approximately 6,200 tourists.  “We have not seen a change in the daily arrivals of tourists, there is no reduction. According to our estimate, arrivals will go up to 105,000 by the end of the month,” Chandrasiri added.  With reference to the data revealed by the Tourism Development Authority, a total of 274,211 tourists had arrived by 27 March 2022. However, the latest figures have not been updated yet.  Sri Lanka recorded the highest number of tourist arrivals in February this year since March 2020. The number of tourist arrivals in January was 82,327. Sri Lanka received 200,798 tourists from 1 January to 6 March.    – By Yakuta Dawood 


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