‘A nice feeling’: Sri Lanka basks in tourism surge after four-year crisis
Al Jazeera
Bomb attacks, COVID-19 and an unmatched economic crisis devastated Sri Lanka’s tourism. Now, visitors are returning.
Colombo, Sri Lanka – Devmith Kaggodarachchi’s beachfront hotel in the southwestern coastal town of Hikkaduwa, a tourist hotspot 136km (85 miles) from the capital Colombo, is nearing full capacity.
The three-star hotel, with air-conditioned rooms and private balconies looking into the Indian Ocean, is busy serving tourists visiting for the Christmas season.
That is not how it’s been for Sri Lanka’s tourism industry over the past four years. Tourist arrivals dropped drastically in 2019 after bombings in three luxury hotels and three churches on Easter killed more than 250 people. The COVID-19 pandemic hit before Sri Lanka had a chance to recover.
The country’s economic and political turmoil in 2022 – when its then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family had to flee, and essential commodities like fuel became almost impossible for everyday people to secure – further pushed tourists away from Sri Lanka.
But a concerted promotional drive to attract foreign visitors, aided by geopolitical tensions unrelated to the country, appears to finally be bearing fruit, offering the nation an engine of revenue that could play a pivotal role in helping Sri Lanka’s economy recover.
