Tourist arrivals in Sri Lanka sharply decline after attack
Posted on July 3rd, 2019
COLOMBO, SRI LANKA
Arrival of tourists to Sri Lanka has rapidly declined in June, dealing a severe blow to the Indian Ocean island nation’s lucrative tourism industry in the aftermath of the Easter bombings that killed more than 250 people, the state-run tourism agency said Wednesday.
The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority said there were 63,072 tourist visits to Sri Lanka last month, a drop of 57% compared with June 2018, when the number was 146,828.
The authority said the highest number of tourist were from India, followed by the Australia, United Kingdom and China. Almost 97% of tourists arrived by air.
The arrival of tourists for the first six months was 1,008,449, a decline of 13.4 % compared with 2018, when 1,164,647 visitors arrived.