First six days of Jan. attracts 16,000 tourists
Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga anticipates monthly tourist arrivals will improve to 100,000-125,000 in Q1
Sets up a new vaccination centre at BIA to prevent unvaccinated visitors, to contain spread of virus
Heralding 2022 with early signs of revival, Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga said yesterday that Sri Lanka had welcomed 16,000 tourists in the first six days, reflecting successful promotions rolled out to boost the industry.
“We anticipate more tourists in the coming months, despite Omicron concerns. We hope this trend will continue. Our expectations are that tourist arrivals will improve to 100,000-125,000 per month in the first quarter of 2022,” he told journalists at Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) in Katunayake following a successful promotion held at the Expo 2020 in Dubai.
As per provisional figures released by the Tourism Ministry; Russia topped the tourist traffic to Sri Lanka followed by India, Ukraine, Germany, the UK, Kazakhstan, Maldives, Australia, France and Poland.
Only 1,682 tourists visited Sri Lanka after borders were reopened for international travellers on 21 January 2021.
Sri Lanka attracted 194,495 tourists for the entirety of 2021, with December attracting a record 89,506 highest for a month since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020.
Tourism Ranatunga described the achievement of nearly 200,000 tourist arrivals in 2021 amidst the pandemic, as a major breakthrough. India topped the list of countries bringing in the most tourists with 56,268; followed by Russia 16,894, UK 16,646, Germany 12,442, and Ukraine 7,037.
Sri Lanka aims to attract 2.3 million tourists for this year with key focus on the Indian, Middle Eastern and Russian markets, whilst hoping that the traditional markets in Europe will rebound in the latter part of 2022.
“The 2.3 million tourist arrivals is a target that we want to aspire to and to generate an income of around $ 4.5 billion,” Minister Ranatunga told international media covering the Expo 2020 in Dubai.
The Minister also said a new vaccination centre has been set up at the BIA, to prevent entry of unvaccinated tourists and to contain the spread of the virus amidst concerns on highly infectious COVID-19 Omicron variant.
He said the newly setup vaccination centre will administer second dose of the Sinopharm job to those who have not been double vaccinated, whilst it has also availed the facility to administer the Pfizer booster shot to travellers.
As per the Minister, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has facilitated for the Sinopharm jabs, while the World Bank has assisted for the booster shots.
(FT)