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Tourist arrivals: figures don’t lie
Tourist arrivals fell marginally by three percent last year from the 2004 figures and that’s commendable given the impact of the tsunami and the ‘Sri Lanka is not ready’ kind of publicity that went with it.

Factually, the number of ‘real’ tourists – those foreigners visiting Sri Lanka for leisure and holiday – has seen a sharp drop in 2005 from 2004, latest official figures show.

According to these figures foreign guest nights (measured by the number of nights foreign tourists spend in hotels) has declined by 40.9 percent made up of Colombo city hotels (minus 17 percent), southern coast (minus 51.4 percent), hill country (minus 43.8 percent) and ancient cities (minus 54.4 percent).

The factual position again is that tourist arrivals, according to Tourist Board measurements, is to count the number of foreign passport holders arriving in the country. This includes Sri Lankans living abroad, NGO workers and other categories of foreigners working here. For example, North America and Australia has seen a 26.1 percent rise in ‘arrivals’ - primarily due to Sri Lankan immigrants and aid workers spending holidays with family or tsunami-related work, industry sources said.

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