Tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka grew 7 percent from a year earlier to 252,033 in February 2019, the State Tourism Development Authority said, amidst a steep fall in visitors from China.
The top generating markets were India with 13 percent of arrivals, the United Kingdom (12 percent), China (11 percent) and France and Germany 7 percent each.
Indian visitors had fallen 1.9 percent to 21,286 and the UK had grown 8.8 percent, to 29,750.
Arrivals from China had plunged 22 percent to 28,039 amid traditional Chinese Lunar New Year holidays, but visitors from the US rose by 61 percent to 9,678, while Australian arrivals rose 61 percent to 6,469.
In 2018 Sri Lanka welcomed 2,333,796 tourists.In the first two months of the year Sri Lanka welcomed 496,272 visitors, up 4.6 percent from a year earlier.
(EconomyNext)