COLOMBO – Sri Lanka received 82,327 tourists in January 2022 compared to 1,682 arrivals in the same month last year, data from the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) showed Wednesday.

Provisional data from the SLTDA showed that Sri Lanka started the new year with 82,327 arrivals in January, despite challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Omicron variant.

However, arrivals are still significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels where 228,434 arrivals were recorded in January 2020.

Post-pandemic arrivals peaked at 89,506 in December 2021. Sri Lanka recently revised its tourist arrival forecast for 2022 down from 2.3 million to 1.1 million due to challenges posed by the Omicron variant.

Tourism contributed to 4.3 percent of Sri Lanka’s gross domestic product and employed 402,607 people in 2019. The country has lost an estimated 10 billion U.S. dollars in tourism revenue over the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.