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Photo Credit: Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka Unsplash / Anton Lecock
Sri Lanka wants more tourists, of course. But these days, it is keeping a close eye on not just how many arrive, but what they are worth beyond the arrival count.
Sri Lanka announced at the Arabian Travel Mart last week that it is aiming for 3 million international tourists over the next 12 months. But the country increasingly wants to be judged on a different number: how much those visitors spend.
The government is targeting more than $5 billion in tourism earnings, according to Alexi Gunasekera, consul general of Sri Lanka to Dubai, who spoke exclusively to Skift at the Arabian Travel Market.
“If we try to attract the normal spending, low-end tourists, we may achieve the numbers, but not tourism earnings,” Gunasekera said. “We are going for quality rather than quantity.”
Sri Lanka generated about $3.2 billion from 2.36 million visitors in 2025, or roughly $1,360 per visitor. To reach $5 billion from 3 million visitors, it would need to lift that to about $1,667 per visitor, still well below destinations like the Maldives that earn roughly $2,480 per visitor.
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Tags: asia monthly , Chinese tourists , india , revenue , skift intelligence , sri lanka , wanderlust
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Sri Lanka is chasing 3 million international visitors over the next 12 months and more than $5 billion in tourism earnings, a target that requires each visitor to spend about $1,667, up from roughly $1,360 in 2025. Alexi Gunasekera, Sri Lanka's consul general in Dubai, told Skift at the Arabian Travel Market that the country is going "for quality rather than quantity," courting destination weddings, meetings and events, wellness, and cruise travelers. The arithmetic is harder than the headline suggests: arrivals through August were about 1.5 million, down 3.3% year over year as Middle East conflict disrupted travel, and Sri Lanka's per-visitor spend still trails the Maldives at roughly $2,480. India supplies about a quarter of arrivals, so Colombo is pushing into China, the UK, Russia, and the Gulf to spread the risk, while targeting affluent Chinese travelers who already spend heavily in the Maldives. Gunasekera says the country has enough rooms — more than 5,800 boutique hotels plus homestays — but demand clusters around Colombo, Kandy, Sigiriya, and the southern beaches, and the north and east need investment. The tighter constraint is labor: the sector could need around 800,000 skilled workers by 2030, and the plan leans on persuading Sri Lankans working abroad to come home.
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