ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka is aiming to lure more European tourists to boost the revenue and the numbers, Tourism and Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath said amid ambitious tourist arrival and revenue targets for this year.
Sri Lanka has aimed for 3 million tourist arrivals and USD 5 billion revenue for this year.
However, the island nation has received 1.86 million foreign visitors as of October 26, around 62 percent of the full year target, while it has witnessed USD 2.47 billion revenue in the first nine months to record less than half of the government’s full year target.
Tourism Minister Herath hoped for the best in achieving the targets.
“We are trying to reach that target. We don’t know whether we will succeed or not,” Hearth told reporters when he was asked if the 2025 targets could be achieved.
India leads the list of tourism arrivals followed by the United Kingdom and Russia.
“We are implementing various promotional programs to bring in more tourists from Europe,” Herath said.
“Recently, we have implemented a major program targeting Scandinavian countries. Also, we have implemented several such programs in the United Kingdom to bring in more tourists from Europe.”
The island nation witnessed 3.17 billion dollar revenue in 2024, with a 53.2 percent jump compared to 2.07 billion dollars in the previous year, the data showed.
The arrivals jumped 38.1 percent to 2.05 million in 2024 compared to the previous year. Sri Lanka missed its ambitious 2.3 million tourist arrival target and 5 billion dollar revenue goal in 2024 as well.
Tourism accounted for nearly 5 percent of Sri Lanka’s economy when the sector was at its peak in 2018. Since then, it has been hit by violent Easter Sunday suicide attack in 2019 and Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 followed by an unprecedented economic crisis. (Colombo/October 28/2025)
Continue Reading
The post Three foreign airlines start operations in Sri Lanka ahead of peak tourism season appeared first on Veritas News.
