Report from Bangkok – PATA Travel Mart 2004: Sri Lanka`s tourist arrivals maintained a strong upward trend for the first eight months of 2004…
Report from Bangkok – PATA Travel Mart 2004: Sri Lanka`s tourist arrivals maintained a strong upward trend for the first eight months of 2004, with a sharp increase from Middle East starting from June this year.
The latest statistics for January to August 2004, indicate that visitor numbers will surpass last year, when arrivals reached the magic 500,000-mark for the first time in the island`s tourism history.
Mr S.Kalaiselvam, Director General of the Sri Lanka Tourism Board revealed that tourist arrivals for January to August 2004 had already reached 324,105 visitors, a 7.3 percent jump on the arrivals for the comparable period in 2003.
The best month for total arrivals in 2004 was July, which recorded 50,525 visitors. The Asia Cricket Cup that Sri Lanka hosted in that month was the magnet, attracting a significant number of visitors from India and Pakistan, Mr Kalaiselvam explained.
The Middle East accounted for 6,152 visitors from January to August 2004, an increase of 38.3 percent over the comparable period for 2003.
August 2004 was an excellent month for traffic for the Middle East. The region showed an increase of 44.3 percent compared to August 2003, which surpassed the recorded increase in the major markets – the U.K., Italy and the Netherlands.
The Middle East is one of the key geographic areas which generated increasing numbers of visitors to Sri Lanka in August 2004.
Middle East airlines have responded to the growing interest in traveling to Sri Lanka by extending services to Colombo. Besides Emirates Airline, which offers 25 scheduled flights per week from Dubai to Colombo, Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways and Air Arabia have all recently launched direct flights to the Sri Lankan capital.
SriLankan Airlines has introduced thrice-weekly operations to Bahrain this summer. The airline also plans to grow its Dubai to Colombo service from 27-34 flights in the near future. As a part of recent bilateral agreements, the national carrier will add two more weekly services from Kuwait.
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