Tag Archives: Sri Lanka

Viset Sontichai, Director, Indian Sub-Continent (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh & Nepal), Thai Airways, has revealed that Thai Smile will start operations from Ahmedabad and Chandigarh to Bangkok very soon. However, Sontichai, who has recently taken over operations for the Indian Sub-continent, did not reveal any dates for this route as yet. But, he said that they are planning to launch the new route to cater to the growing Tier-II and Tier-III markets. He also said that among the new connections from India, they are planning to connect UK from Bangkok via India. However, instead of London they are planning to connect Manchester and Birmingham. He also revealed that they are planning to also start a flight from Islamabad to Manchester by the end of this year.

Sri Lanka received 28,895 Indian tourists in January 2016, an increase of 25.9 per cent this year as compared to the same period in 2015. The total number of tourists in Sri Lanka rose by 24.3 per cent in January 2016, with 194,280 tourist arrivals as compared to the 156,246 in January 2015. The data released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) showed that India contributed 14.8 per cent of the total tourist arrivals, retaining the spot as the largest source market for the country. The region wise data of tourist arrivals for January 2016 showed 122.3 per cent increase from China; 48.1 per cent increase from the East Asia; 23.8 per cent increase from Western Europe; 20.7 per cent increase from South Asia; 17.9 per cent from Australasia; 17.3 per cent increase from North America; 17.2 per cent increase from the US; 14.7 per cent increase from the Middle East; 11.6 per cent from Africa and 11.1 per cent increase from Eastern Europe. However, Sri Lanka witnessed a decline of 9.5 per cent from Russia and 28.5 per cent decline from Pakistan for the month of January 2016 as compared to the same period in 2015. SLTDA has set a target of 2.5 million tourist arrivals by the end of 2016.