SRI Lanka this month welcomed its 100,000th visitor from China, reaping the fruits of promotion campaigns targeted at the Chinese.
Chinese tourist numbers to Sri Lanka have soared in the past four years from just 10,340 in 2010 to over 100,000 now.
Between January and September, arrivals hiked 141 per cent year-on-year to 94,994 to make China Sri Lanka’s third biggest market. During the same period, India took the lion’s share of 170,671 arrivals, the UK registered 107,330, and Germany 75,133.
“There are three elements that are attracting the Chinese to Sri Lanka: this is peaceful country and it is very green, the people are friendly, and there are a lot of wildlife and beaches,” noted Bhaswara Gunaratne, chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism (SLT).
He said SLT promotions in China over the past 18 months are now paying dividends. Arrivals should “easily peak over 120,000” by end-2014.
While agreeing that SLT promotions have helped boost arrivals, Shafraz Fazley, managing director of Viluxor Holidays Sri Lanka, believes social media and blogs have played a bigger role.
“Chinese visitors take pictures and put it on blogs, and that attracts their friends. Sri Lanka’s attraction is essentially gems, mountains and culture,” he said.
He noted that the Chinese rarely spend two nights in the same place, and buying gems is a dream for them.
Viluxor, which also has a huge market share in the Maldives for Chinese visitors, has so far handled 1,000 Chinese guests this month (as of last week) and 700 last month.
