Sri Lanka hits...

India continued to dominate as the top source market, contributing 48,113 visitors or 29.1% of the total.

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India continued to dominate as the top source market, contributing 48,113 visitors or 29.1% of the total. The United Kingdom followed with 12,934 arrivals (7.8%), Russia with 11,496 (7%), China with 10,864 (6.6%) and Germany with 9,753 (5.9%). Tourists also arrived from Australia, Bangladesh, France, the United States, and Spain.

The strong October performance pushed total arrivals for the first 10 months of 2025 to over 1.89 million, registering a 17% YoY increase—narrowly surpassing the 1.88 million visitors recorded during the same period in benchmark year 2018.

India also remains the largest overall source market so far this year with 423,405 arrivals (22%), followed by the UK 174,827 (9%), Russia 133,640 (7%), Germany 116,741 (6%) and China 112,454 (6%).

Industry stakeholders attributed the record-breaking month to the resumption of several international and charter flights for the winter season and the surge in global interest following international rankings.

Given the forward bookings for the season and the rollout of country’s firstever self-funded and curated destination marketing campaign to boost tourist arrivals amidst frustration over the delay in initiatives by State agencies, they predicted that the year would end with slightly over 2.4 million travellers.

Despite the upbeat results, arrivals fell short of by 20% or 32,500 of the SLTDA’s forecast of 197,693 for October. The authority's revised projections for 2025 outline three potential outcomes: A’Lower Scenario” of 2.415 million arrivals, a“Conservative Scenario” of 2.676 million and an “Optimistic Scenario” of 3 million (https://www. sitda.gov.lk/storage/ common_media/Growth_ Scenarios_2025_final_1. pdf).

In September, SLTDA Chairman Buddhika Hewawasam acknowledged that the authority had quietly revised its annual target to a more achievable 2.6 million visitors, down from 3 million, though he stressed this would “still be ahistorical high.”