Lanka achieves 800,000 tourist arrivals

Achieving another remarkable milestone in the country’s booming tourism industry, Sri Lanka Tourism welcomed the arrival of 800,000th tourist in year 2011 at the Bandaranaike International Airport today (19th Dec.) evening, Sri Lanka tourism said in a press statement.

This is the first time ever; the tourism industry has received number of arrivals exceeding 800,000 in any given year, making it a ground breaking figure in tourism records.

Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism-Dr.Nalaka Godahewa and Managing Director –Mr. Rumy Jauffeur with a group of representatives from travel and tourism Industry warmly welcomed the guest who arrived via UL 501 Sri Lankan Airlines flight from London.

Sri Lanka Tourism offered a special gift and a complimentary package to the tourist who arrived today to visit country’s well- known attractions. During year 2010, total number of tourist arrivals were recorded as 654,476 nos. as opposed to 800,000 in 2012 so far, which is a 33.1% annual growth.

This year has seen a massive contribution to this total from India, Japan, Germany, U.K, France, Netherlands, Italy, and Middle Eastern countries. The month of November 2011 breaks another record being the month which received the highest number of tourists – 90,889 numbers in the history of Sri Lanka Tourism calender years.

The arrival of 800,000th tourist has turned everyone’s eyes on country’s fast growing tourism sector which has started sending positive signals of its promising future ahead.

Sri Lanka recently launched an ambitious five year strategic development plan for the year 2011-2016 with a target to attract US$ 3,000 million worth Foreign Direct investment (FDI) most of which will be invested in tourism infrastructure development.

There will be an increase in the foreign exchange earnings from US$ 500 million in 2010 to USD 2.75 billion by the year 2016. A huge increase is expected in the tourism related employment from 125,000 in 2010 to 500,000 by 2016, the Sri Lankan Tourist Board said.

Sri Lanka Tourism says it will continue to expedite successful programms conducted during the year 2011 including the visiting journalists programme (VJP) attracting nearly 200 journalists from reputed media institutes around the world to visit Sri Lanka and generate positive publicity based on their authentic experience to serve attracting potential travelers to the destination.