Tourism earnings target missed by $1.8 b

Sri Lanka's tourism earnings fell short of its target by roughly $1.8 billion in 2025, achieving only 64% of the expected $5 billion, according to Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism Minister Vijitha Herath at a press conference yesterday (5).

“With 2,362,000 tourists, we have achieved significant growth compared to global tourism trends. This influx resulted in an income of $3.2 billion,” Herath said, highlighting the 2.3 million tourist arrivals, which led to the earnings. 

Sri Lanka however fell short of its tourism arrivals target in 2025 by roughly around 638, 000 arrivals, of the 3 million targeted. 2025’s arrivals show a marginal 13.9% increase from the total arrivals posted in 2024. Arrivals in 2024 also fell short of its 3 million target by 946,535 arrivals.

“Due to the targeted promotional programmes and collective efforts implemented last year, we succeeded in making 2025 the year with the highest number of tourist arrivals in our history,” Herath stated.  

Herath further stated that the combined earnings from foreign employment and tourism contributed around $11 billion to the economy. “By combining $7.8 billion from remittances and $3.2 billion from the tourism industry, our ministry has generated nearly $11 billion from these two sectors alone,” he added.

According to First Capital Research, a private market research and advisory unit, though tourism arrivals saw a marginal increase by 0.3% between January and October 2025, tourism earnings contracted by 24.9%, within the same time period.

It also had revised its expectations for tourism earnings for 2025 down by 18.3% to $3.3 billion, and its projections for 2026 down by 22.6% to $3.7 billion, in November of 2025.

Sri Lanka posted its highest tourism earnings in 2018, with $4.4 billion in earnings posted within the year. Total earnings for 2025 are yet to be released by Sri Lankan official channels. 

Source: The morning