Colombo : There was an 8.5 percent increase of tourist arrivals to Sri Lanka in January in comparison to the corresponding period last year. A total of 56,553 tourists had visited in January in comparison to 52,103 arrivals the previous year. The arrivals were spearheaded by the South Asian regions with 16,611 arrivals from India, while 7,644 visited the country from United Kingdom.

Western Europe had brought in 18,939 and the South Asian countries 21,622 tourists in January year.

Minister of Tourism Milinda Moragoda who was in China last week with President Mahinda Rajapaksa said that there is a vast tourist potential in China specially in Shanghai. “The religious and pilgrim tourism is one area we are going to concentrate on,” he said. He said that they would follow up this visit soon and launch several programs to woo the market. “We would be having follow up action in this regard,” he said.

The Minister also said that they have also decided to pay more attention to the domestic tourism and are looking at renovating Rest Houses and Circuit Bungalows to suit the local travellers.

“We cannot promote international tourism without promoting local tourism,” he said. Sri Lanka Tourist Board already has Rest Houses in Kataragama, Nuwara Eliya and Bandarawela.

Commenting on the adverse travel adversaries the Minister said that they have already opened a dialogue with countries concerned.

He said that a new board has been appointed to the SLTB and they are professionals mainly from the private sector.

These appointments were made on the nominations forwarded by several travel associations and other bodies.

This would pave the way for private sector thinking to come into the SLTB and thereby several new plans would be formulated to develop tourism under the Mahinda Chintana.

The Minister said that the plans to develop Kalpitiya and Bentota would go ahead as, President Mahinda Rajapaksa too is very keen to develop these two areas.