Tourism Could Not Have Solved Sri Lanka's Foreign Exchange Shortage

The expectation was that tourism would bring in an additional Sri Lanka’s estimates of USD USD 4.9 Billion in foreign currency tourism spend a day from Thailand’s estimated spending per inflows as the industry returned to pre- tourist per day (2019) pandemic levels. [...] its survey is extraordinarily high compared to peer This view bolstered the position that Sri Lanka was facing only a short-term countries, and even those foreign currency liquidity problem until with higher per capita GDP page 1 | 3 Exhibit 1: According to SLTDA, Sri Lanka Foreign exchange receipts per tourists experienced the highest reported per day earnings in tourism in the year Average 2019. [...] This Country (2015 – 2019) (2019) earnings figure is a calculation Sri Lanka USD 168 USD 181 USD 3,852 done using three variables: Thailand USD 158 USD 164 USD 7,817 Indonesia USD 136 USD 129 USD 4,135 India USD 126 USD 130 USD 2,101 Vietnam USD 114 USD 133 USD 2,715 Nepal USD 54 USD 48 USD 1,195 Source: Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority | Ministries of Tourism of relevant countries | OECD T. [...] Over-estimation of tourism inflows The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) reports that from 2012 Sri Lanka estimates its tourism earnings to 2019, on average, only 11% of tourists based on an exit survey conducted stayed in five-star hotels in Sri Lanka. [...] However, in the same year The third visible indicator that was dynamics already showed that it was 350,000 Sri Lankans visited India as neglected was the inadequacy of not reasonable to expect that tourism tourists.