The tourist arrivals for the first 15 days of November stood at 27,213, making Sri Lanka inches away from crossing the 600,000 arrival mark for the year.

As per the provisional data released by the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority, tourist arrivals for the January 01 to November 15 period stood at 595,471.

The island nation is well on track to see tourist arrivals cross 60,000 in the third week of November. An analysis of the weekly tourist arrival numbers shows a significant improvement in tourist arrivals to the country. 

From the fourth week of October, Sri Lanka has welcomed over 10,000 tourists for three consecutive weeks.

In the first week of November, Sri Lanka welcomed 12,431 tourists and for the second week, the arrivals increased by 19 percent to 14,782.

The Russian Federation stood out as the largest source market for Sri Lanka, accounting for 25 percent of the total arrivals in the first half of November.

The second largest tourist traffic generator was India, accounting for 16 percent of the arrivals. 

Ranking third is the UK, which accounted for 8 percent of the total arrivals.

The other notable markets for November thus far have been Germany, Australia and Canada.