Sri Lanka tourist arrivals moves down by 7.5pc in April

The month recorded 166,975 tourists arriving in the country compared to the 180,429 arrived in April 2018, said a ColomboPage report.

As at 30th April 2019, 907,575 of tourists had visited Sri Lanka for this year. It is a 2.2pc growth over last year when 888,353 tourists had visited the country during the same period.

This month, the largest source market for tourists is United Kingdom, followed by the India and Germany.

Europe became the largest source of tourist traffic to Sri Lanka with 52pc of the total traffic received in April 2019. Asia and Pacific accounted for 38pc of the total traffic, America 6pc, Middle East 3pc and Africa 1pc.

United Kingdom, India, Germany, China and Australia were Sri Lanka's top five international tourist generating markets in the month of April this year. United Kingdom was the largest source of tourist traffic to Sri Lanka with 15pc of the total traffic received in April 2019.

India accounted for 14pc of the total traffic while Germany, China and Australia accounted for 10pc, 8pc and 6pc respectively.

Arrivals from North America fell 37.4 per cent to 8,900 in April and the arrivals from US declined 44.6 per cent to 4,810 during the month while arrivals from Canada declined 24.8 per cent.

Tourist arrivals from Europe increased by 14.6 per cent with the arrival of 63,753 tourists. Most of the tourists came from UK (24,718), followed by Germany (16,930), France (9,148), and Switzerland (4,531).

Tourist arrivals from Middle East increased by 16.8 per cent with the arrival of 4,363 visitors compared to the 3,736 arrived in April 2018.

Tourist arrivals from Asia & Pacific declined by 23.2 per cent with 63,753 arriving in the island. Tourist arrivals from India fell by 21.5 per cent with 29,860 visitors arriving while arrivals from China decreased by 18.3 per cent to record 17,462 arrivals.

Arrivals from Australia recorded 31.8 per cent decline with only 9,565 visitors entering the country in April 2019.