Sri Lanka should stop measuring tourism by how many people arrive and start measuring it by what they spend and where they spend it, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism Minister Vijitha Herath said this week, NewsFirst reported.
Herath set out the recovery in arrivals since the economic crisis: 1.49 million visitors in 2023, more than 2.05 million in 2024, 2.36 million in 2025, and roughly 1.7 million by the end of September this year. He called the trend encouraging but said success should not be measured by arrival numbers alone.
The future strategy, he argued, must target visitors who stay longer, spend more, travel beyond the established tourism hotspots and contribute more to local economies — and who come throughout the year rather than clustering in the traditional season.
MICE as the chosen lever
Herath named Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) tourism as the main opportunity. His argument is that a conference delegate’s spending spreads well beyond the venue, into transport, restaurants, technology suppliers, event organisers, entertainment and a long tail of supporting businesses.
He listed Sri Lanka’s advantages as its position in the Indian Ocean, widening air connectivity, an established hospitality sector, modern venues and a mix of cultural and natural attractions — and argued the real differentiator is combination: a delegate can take business meetings in the morning, visit archaeological sites in the afternoon and be at a wildlife park or a dinner table by evening.
The event behind the speech
The remarks come as Sri Lanka hosts the SL-MICE Expo 2026, organised by the Sri Lanka Convention Bureau under Herath’s ministry, the Daily Mirror reported.
The programme opened on 5 October with a MICE Business Forum and welcome reception at Cinnamon Grand Colombo, and continued on 6 October with the official opening ceremony and B2B sessions at Shangri-La Colombo. The expo has drawn more than 120 hosted international MICE and travel operators plus media from 26 countries, and pairs them with over 125 Sri Lankan suppliers. Organisers expect the B2B programme to generate more than 10,000 business meetings.
The opening was attended by Herath, Deputy Minister of Tourism Prof. Ruwan Ranasinghe, Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha and ministry secretary Aruni Ranaraja.
NewsFirst describes Herath as addressing “a tourism-related forum” without naming it; the Daily Mirror’s account places him at the expo’s opening ceremony.
The arrivals picture is flatter than “surge” suggests
Herath’s annual series is a real recovery, and his end-September figure checks out — Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority data put the nine-month total at 1,693,679. But the headline framing of surging arrivals does not survive a look at the year-on-year comparison.
That nine-month total is down 1.84% on the same period in 2025, and September itself came in 414 visitors below September 2025 — denying the island both a record month and its first month of growth since May.
That context arguably strengthens rather than undercuts the minister’s case. If arrival volumes have plateaued, yield per visitor is the remaining lever, which is what a MICE-weighted strategy is designed to pull.
Not reported
Neither filing attaches a target to the strategy — no figure for desired spend per visitor, length of stay, or share of arrivals from MICE. Neither says what budget, incentives or regulatory change will support the shift, nor how “high-value” is to be defined or measured. Neither reports what business the expo actually converted, as against the 10,000 meetings projected, and neither addresses the flat year-on-year arrivals trend.
Sources: NewsFirst, Daily Mirror.
