Sri Lanka welcomes one million tourist in 2012

Dec 31, Colombo: Sri Lanka welcomed the one million tourist in 2012 to the island Sunday night at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Katunayake. Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Lakshman Yapa Abeywardena, Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism Bhashwara Gunaratne and officials of the Sri Lanka Tourism were at the airport to welcome the one millionth tourist, Ms. Jiang Ying from China.
The tourist and her husband arrived on board Sri Lankan Airlines UL 188 flight from Beijing, China.
Sri Lanka with 883,353 tourists in the 11 months to November surpassed Maldives in terms of tourist arrivals. The country welcomed the 950,000th visitor on December 18th accomplishing the annual target for 2012. One million tourist arrivals in 2012 are estimated to bring revenues exceeding one US$ billion, up from last year's record income of $830.3 million earned from 855,975 arrivals.
Sri Lanka has set a target of 1.3 million tourist arrivals for 2013.
Since the end of the war against the Tamil Tiger terrorists in May 2009, the country has seen increasing tourist arrivals every year for the past three years.