COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals in the month of June rose 11.9 percent year-on-year (yoy) to 115, 467, the data released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority showed.
Tourist from South Asia, the second largest source market for Sri Lanka as a region rose 19.5 percent yoy to 36, 972 with arrivals from India rising 29.9 percent yoy to 25, 860.
Arrivals from Maldives however fell 7.6 percent yoy to 6, 957. Tourists from Pakistan picked up 27.7 percent yoy to 2, 825.
Tourists from Western Europe, Sri Lanka’s largest source market, rose 19.7 percent yoy to 27, 776 with arrival from the U.K. increasing 10.1 percent yoy to 8, 580.
Tourists from Germany and France also rose 30.5 percent to 5, 649 and 4.5 percent yoy to 3, 012, respectively.
Arrivals from Eastern Europe continued to pick up, following a dip in the first three months of the year due to political instability in Russia and Ukraine.
Eastern European tourists amounting to 5, 271 visited Sri Lanka in June, up 22.3 percent yoy with arrivals from Russia and Ukraine picking up 7.8 percent yoy to 2, 239 and 17.4 percent yoy to 823, respectively.
Arrivals from East Asia, the third largest source market by region rose 19.2 percent yoy to 26, 217. Tourists from China, including Hong Kong and Macau surged 85.6 percent yoy to 15, 487.
However, tourist arrivals from other East Asian countries including Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand slowed down.
Tourists from Middle East fell 46.6 percent yoy to 5, 282 with the starting of Ramadan fasting in the mid part of the month.
The cumulative tourist arrivals in the first six months of 2015 amounted to 830, 051, up 14.1 percent yoy.
Sri Lanka targets 2 million tourists at the end of this year and 2.5 million by 2016.
Sri Lanka Tourism follows the UN standard of defining a tourist as a person who stays at least one night in a country and does not exceed his stay period for more than 12 months.
