The month recorded 584,818 tourists arriving in the country compared to the 157,051 arrived in March 2015.

In the first three months of this year 391,977 tourists visited the island compared to the 478,838 visited in March 2015, recording an increase of 22.1%.

Arrivals from North America rose 21% to 9,165 in March and the arrivals from US rose 21.3% to 5,265 during the month while arrivals from Canada increased 23.5% to 3,900.

Tourist arrivals from Western Europe reached 69,972 during the month rising 22.6 percent from the 57,094 tourists arrived in the same month last year. Most of the tourists came from UK (21,430), Germany (16,264) and France (11,175).

Arrivals from Eastern Europe increased 7.9% with the arrival of 16,899 tourists in March 2015. Falling number of tourist arrivals from Russia by 16.7% to 5,916 contributed to the low number of arrivals from the Eastern Europe.

Tourist arrivals from Middle East increased significantly by 17.5% with 10,094 visitors.

Tourist arrivals from East Asia increased 24% as 33,957 visited the country while arrivals from China increased 40.6% with 19,645 tourists arriving in the country in March 2016.

Arrivals from South Asia in the month increased by 28.6 % with 44,175 tourists visiting the island. Of those arrived from South Asia, 30,170 were from India corresponding to an increase of 38.2%.

Nearly 1.8 million tourists arrived in Sri Lanka last year contributing US$ 2.86 billion of earnings to the government revenues in 2015 compared to US$ 2.43 billion recorded during 2014.

(news.lk)