Tourists top 598,000 upto September

Hemanthi Guruge

Tourist arrivals in the first nine months of the year has topped 598,006. This amounts to a 34 percent increase over the same period last year.

The government along with the Sri Lanka Tourist Development Authority is anticipating the number to exceed 800,000 by the end of this year. Tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka in September increased by 27 percent as compared to arrival figures of the same period last year. The number of tourist arrivals in September has been 60,219.

Majority of the visitors were from Western Europe numbering over 19,000. A Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau source told Daily News Business that tourism in Sri Lanka is booming with the highest number of visitors recorded in 30 years.

Visitors from South Asia rose 51 percent to 18,422 and arrival from East Asia rose by 64 percent to 8,841. Arrival from Australasia also rose 25 percent compared with the same period last year. In addition, French visitors rose 46 percent to 2,848, Germans by 10 percent to 3,386 and Netherlands visitors increased 20 percent to 1,505. There were 226,990 tourists from Western Europe visiting Sri Lanka during the first nine months of the year.