Tourist arrivals drop by 17.7% in February

Colombo (News 1st) - The total number of tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka in February has declined by 17.7 % in comparison to February last year. The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority said that this could be due to the outbreak of COVID-19 coupled with last year's April 21st attacks. According to statistics issued by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, a total of 207,507 tourist arrivals were recorded last month. These figures marked a slight drop when compared to the number of tourist arrivals in January which stood at 228,434. A report released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority showed that the highest number of tourists were from India with the number of arrivals standing at 35,309. UK and Russia came in second and third with figures of 26,348 and 20,948 respectively. The report showed that Europe was the largest source of traffic to Sri Lanka when compared to other regions as it recorded 60.1% of tourist arrivals.