Sri Lanka's tourism earnings for last month dropped by 5.6 per cent, compared with its revenue from January 2025, despite an all-time high number of arrivals. Last week, the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) reported that 277,327 tourists arrived in the island in the first month of 2026, up from 252,761 in January last year. However, figures from the Central Bank of Sri Lanka show that revenue from tourism stood at USD 378.3 million, down from USD 400.7 million in January 2025. Why is this the case? According to the Chairman of the SLTDA, Buddhika Hewawasam, Sri Lanka has not been able to fully tap into high-spending demographics, with average expenditure per tourist at around USD 140 per day. “For 2026, we are strategising to increase the daily expenditure per person to at least USD 160. With that increase and a target of 2.7 million arrivals, we are confident we can reach a revenue of USD 4 to 4.5 billion,” Hewawasam was quoted as saying by the Daily Mirror in comments made in December last year. Hewawasam had highlighted “Saudi Arabia and the broader Middle East as a primary focus” to address this, adding that the region, known for its higher spending power, had remained largely untapped. The United States was also identified as another key growth area. What are Sri Lanka’s biggest tourism markets? A majority of tourist arrivals in January were from India (19% while the United Kingdom and Russia accounted for 11% and 10% respectively, data from the SLTDA show. This was consistent with figures from the whole of 2025, where Indian tourists made up 22.5% of the arrivals, ahead of the United Kingdom (9%) and Russia (7.9%)