Being a tourism information company we did an in depth analysis on how Corona virus can impact on Sri Lanka’s tourism industry. Sri Lanka has been going through a rough patch after the 2019 Easter Bombings happened in several major hotels, and churches. While Sri Lanka hasn't recovered fully yet, and under performing compared to the first quarter of 2019, Corona virus will take it further down.
The number of arrivals has started to decline from the start of 2020 and the below table is a comparison of February 2020 to february 2019. While China being one of the largest arrivals sources hadn’t made it even to the top 10.
|
Country |
Feb 2019 |
Feb 2020 |
% |
|
United Kingdom |
28039 |
26348 |
6 |
|
Germany |
17268 |
16405 |
5 |
|
France |
17295 |
11430 |
33.9 |
|
United States |
9678 |
7803 |
19.4 |
|
Canada |
6469 |
5482 |
15.3 |
There are a few other countries that have been developing in terms of the arrivals. We assume that’s because corona virus was not widely spreaded out of China in February and tourists were traveling .
These are a few predictions which were made to spotlight from countries of the same region.
“We forecast an overall decline of up to 50% in the number of bookings for the first half of the year, compared with the same period last year”
- Bangkok / Singapore, Reuters
“The Tourism Authority of Thailand has assumed that it will be facing a loss of 95 billion baht (US$3.05 billion) because of a reduction in Chinese tourists through January and April. In Feb (1-10), the bookings were dropped by 71 percent as a whole when compared to last year while stating 99% from china as for the information provided by the Association of Thai Travel Agents. They have estimated 50-60% of 3 million tourists to step back from visiting Thailand in February.“
- source
“India is among the 15 most affected economies due to the COVID-19 epidemic and slowdown in production in China, with a trade impact of $348 million.”
- India, The Hindu
"Quantas being a major airline in the Oneworld (https://www.oneworld.com/) records their shares had fallen 5.03 per cent to a more than two-year low of 4.815 on 6th March 2020."
- 7news
Sri Lanka’s national career being one of the members of Oneworld will have similar effects, though there are no official predictions made.
By reading many news posts, economic predictions the whole global tourism industry is at a stand still, and no one has made any predictions on how long the effect will be on. By looking at the regional news we believe that Sri Lanka will have a massive impact on tourist arrivals for the year 2020 and will need to have stronger strategies to bounce back.