Industry sees 12th consecutive monthly decline year on year since Easter Sunday setback Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals had fell by 70.8% from a year earlier to 71,370 in March 2020, amid COVID-19 crisis, the latest data released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) showed. March marked the third consecutive month of drop in tourist arrivals. In January, arrivals fell by 6.5% to 228,434 and in February arrivals dropped by 17.7% to 207,507. Since April 2019, following the Easter Sunday terror attacks, Sri Lanka has witnessed monthly decline in tourist arrivals year-on-year in comparison to 2018 and 2019. Sri Lanka tightened tourist arrivals from mid-March and suspended all passenger arrivals from all countries on March 19 in order to contain the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. This month, the largest source market for tourists was India, followed by the Russian Federation and United Kingdom. Almost 98 % of tourists travelled by air to Sri Lanka. Europe became the largest source of tourist traffic to Sri Lanka with 60 % of the total traffic received in March 2020. Asia and Pacific accounted for 34 % of the total traffic, Americas 4.6 %, Middle East 0.9 % and Africa 0.5%. In comparison to March last year the highest decline of 85.7% was recorded for Middle East region while Americas recorded a decline of 83.4%. Africa recorded a decline of 77.9 % whereas Asia and pacific recorded a decline of 75.4%. A decline of 64.3% was recorded from Europe. The effect of the outbreak of COVID 19 is clearly evident as all countries have recorded a decline in arrivals. However, it is noteworthy that arrivals from Kazakhstan have recorded an increase of 79.7%. It is noteworthy that China which dropped from the top ten tourist generating markets of Sri Lanka in the month of February has climbed up to the ninth position among the top ten markets despite the outbreak of COVID 19.
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