Third wave closes borders on EU tourists
With the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic taking its toll in most of Europe these markets are looking at lockdowns as a result of which Sri Lanka is likely to face a slowdown in tourist traffic from these nations.
Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga told the Business Times that should the countries in Europe close down then “our numbers will come down” but they hope to pick up by July and August.
Moreover, he remained optimistic that the industry would however survive on traffic from some of the states in the Russian bloc. He pointed out that Sri Lanka is currently heading towards the off season and that following the vaccination they will be getting better as a nation that is overcoming the virus.
In fact he stated that traditionally though most tourists are attracted from countries like Germany, numbers from markets like this are low due to the restrictions in place.
There has been reports of a spike in the number of new cases in the some of the Central and South East European countries and even in Germany.
Reports state that the so-called UK variant, which is said to be 75 per cent more transmissible, is now dominant in the European Union, although the South African and the Brazilian mutations have also been detected in several EU countries.
As a result, many countries have now introduced or increased lockdown measures for the coming weeks, covering the Easter holidays, reports stated.
Additionally, several countries including Germany, Belgium, Hungary, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Slovakia have put in place unilateral restrictions for non-essential travel in a bid to curb the number of infections.
Minister Ranatunga explained that as a result of this situation they will be including the Russian states as well as part of the global promotion campaign as well.
The government will also be looking at relaxing some of the guidelines in terms of the number of PCR tests carried out on vaccinated tourists arriving in the country.
According to official data, tourist arrivals in January and February 2021 were just a trickle at 5,048 compared to over 430,000 in the same 2020 period. The airport was reopened to international traffic from January 21 after a 10-month closure.
Sri Lanka Tourism said that Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Germany, Russian Federation and China were Sri Lanka’s top five international tourist generating markets in the month of February. Kazakhstan was the largest source of tourist traffic to Sri Lanka with 36.6 per cent of the total traffic received in above period. Ukraine accounted for 25.1 per cent of the total traffic.