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March arrivals to exceed February, despite Ukraine-Russia conflict 

20 Mar 2022

Despite fears of a drop in tourist arrivals due to the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the surge in global ticketing prices, Airport and Aviation Services (Sri Lanka) (Pvt) Ltd. (AASL) is optimistic that Sri Lanka will see arrivals of 105,000 tourists by 31 March, exceeding February’s total arrivals of 96,507 tourists. Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business, AASL Chairman Major General (Retd.) G.A. Chandrasiri disclosed that as of 17 March 2022, a total of 55,000 international tourists had visited Sri Lanka in March, with daily arrivals of approximately 6,200 tourists.  “We have not seen a change in the daily arrivals of tourists, there is no reduction. According to our estimate, arrivals will go up to 105,000 arrivals by the end of the month,” Chandrasiri stated.  When asked if there had been a reduction of international flights to Sri Lanka due to the local dollar crisis, he said that as far as he was aware, there had been no change in international flights currently operating to Sri Lanka.  Sri Lanka recorded the highest number of tourist arrivals in February this year since March 2020. The number of tourists who arrived in January was 82,327. Sri Lanka received 200,798 tourists from 1 January to 6 March.  Minister of Finance Basil Rajapaksa had recently agreed to provide $ 56 million to promote Sri Lanka tourism by the second quarter of this year.  Speaking to The Sunday Morning Business in this regard, Tourism Ministry Secretary S. Hettiarachchi stated that the procurement process for the global tourism promotional campaign of Sri Lanka Tourism had been commenced by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) and other relevant stakeholders.  Speaking on the country’s present economic situation, Hettiarachchi said that the funding for the project was now being utilised in a “light way” and that the authorities involved were working to launch the project the moment Sri Lanka regained normalcy. “We want to get ready and once the situation is okay, we will start the global promotion. This is the strategy now. However, we are not doing many promotional campaigns at the moment,” Hettiarachchi said.  This global campaign has been delayed for several years under two consecutive governments and impacted by the Easter Sunday bomb attacks and pandemic outbreak. The campaign was later scheduled to be launched in January 2021, however it was delayed further due to the authorities expressing concerns about reopening Sri Lanka to tourists.  – By Yakuta Dawood 


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