Sri Lanka Tourism Booms: 77.9% Growth & Rs. 2.5B Investment

News Today: Sri Lanka Tourism marketing growth 2024 drives global investment

Sri Lanka Tourism will invest Rs. 2.5 billion within the next 18 m months for focused global tourism marketing promotion centering key growth markets mainly focusing on the new tourism brand identity, “Sri Lanka You Will Come Back for More’’ said Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB) Managing Director Nalin Perera.

This amount for Digital and PR would be raised from the revenue generated for Tourism Development Levy and from embarkation fees. He said these campaigns would be executed via advertising agencies both locally and globally and some have already stated.

The major achievement for this year is the launch of PR and Digital campaigns in India, China, UK, Germany and in France for a period of one year and for six months respectively. This will create more awareness about Sri Lanka to the travelling public in these countries focusing on the winter season and coming 2025.

He said that by the year end Sri Lanka tourism will move up the ladder to be the second highest FOREX earner beating apparel export revenue to the country earning a record income in the excess of USD 4.3 billion. Sri Lanka has received USD 1,556 million receipts for tourism from January to July end. This is an increase of 77.9% achieved in 2023 (876 million) and SLTPB Chairman, Chalaka Gajabahu said that they also had many successful foreign FAM tours in 2024 by inviting nearly 58 foreign media personnel including travel Influencers and bloggers generating over USD 550 million worth of media publicity for Sri Lanka Tourism.

Sri Lanka attracted 187,810 tourist arrivals for July 2024 recording the best figure after a layoff of three months. This is a 13.3% increase as against the 2023 July figure which was 143,039.

“We see increased arrivals and Sri Lanka Tourism is hopeful that it will achieve the tourism target of 2,3 million tourists this year. We hope to attract 3 million by 2025 and 5 million by 2030 out of which over 40% would be high spenders with over USD 500 per day. Currently this figure which was around USD 140 has increased to USD 160.”