Saturday, 05 Oct, 2024
By: Yash Gupte
Tourism officials in Sri Lanka, aware of the urgent need to strengthen their nation's economy, intend to attract more Indian visitors, who make up the single largest sector of foreign visitors, with innovative packages like the Murugan-Shiva-Shakthi treks.
Tourism officials in Sri Lanka, aware of the urgent need to strengthen their nation's economy, intend to attract more Indian visitors, who make up the single largest sector of foreign visitors, with innovative packages like the Murugan-Shiva-Shakthi treks. Their optimism is based on a proposal to restore passenger flights from the Jaffna airport's Palaly terminal to locations in southern India. Two significant locations have been added to the Murugan trail: Kataragama in the Uva Province to the southeast and Nallur Kandaswamy or Murugan temple in Jaffna of the Northern Province. Chalaka Gajabahu, the head of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, recently informed a group of Indian journalists in Colombo that the festival in Nallur, which has been going on for 25 days and ends on August 27, was anticipated to gather more than a million worshippers, including 100,000 from abroad. For Hindu worshippers, a "special calendar" of occasions was being created.
Sri Lanka is taking these steps by keeping in mind its worsening economic situation and its dependence on India for essential imports. The bureau chief has also emphasized in accommodating more tourists for the Ramayana trail. Even while Indian tourists made up the majority of international visitors, Mr. Gajabahu said that various measures were being done to draw in more of them. Both India and Sri Lanka agreed in 2008 to work on enhancing shared cultural and religious values based on the Ramayana heritage. There are 52 sites on the Ramayana Trail in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka's newly-appointed tourism brand Ambassador and cricket legend Sanath Jayasuriya recently stated that his country is trying to maximize its efforts for drawing more number of Indian tourists for the Ramayana Trail. This tends to help the island nation in improving the current situation as it has been witnessing one of the worst economic crises since its Independence in 1948. India has been at the forefront of extending economic assistance of nearly $4 billion to Sri Lanka during the year. Tourism has once again remerged as a hope for Sri Lanka to fight the economic crisis.
The chart below shows the footfall of tourists per year in Sri Lanka from 2017 to 2022.
*Up to July 2022
Source: Sri Lanka tourism development authority
The year 2018 witnessed the highest footfall of foreign tourist in Sri Lanka when around 23, 33, 796 tourists visited the island country. India has been the highest contributor to the tourism industry of Sri Lanka. The tourism industry of Sri Lanka was performing well till 2019 but later due to some unforeseen circumstances like the Easter attacks of 2019, covid-19 pandemic and worsening economy, tourism sharply declined. In 2020, only 5, 07, 704 tourists visited the country as compared to 19, 13, 702 in the previous year. The tourism industry of Sri Lanka has faced lot of hardships due to the reasons mentioned above. Therefore, the Sri Lankan government is focusing heavily on increasing the footfall of Indian tourists as compared to China, U.K. and Russia, the footfall of tourists from India is maximum. The year 2022 tends to be a good year for the Sri Lanka’s tourism industry as 4, 58, 670 tourists have visited the country till July as compared to 1, 94, 495 tourists in 2021 and new packages like Shiva-shakthi trails and Ramayana Trail will attract more Indian tourists.
