“All the Twos – 22” but its not Bingo!
Former Deputy Tourism Minister Faizer Musthapha questions whether a visa that can translate into a qualifying remittance of just US$22 per person per day is compatible with higher-value tourism – and says infrastructure and domestic air connectivity require urgent attention
COLOMBO – Sri Lanka’s Digital Nomad Visa is coming under scrutiny over whether its comparatively low financial threshold is consistent with the country’s wider strategy of attracting higher-value visitors and maximising foreign-exchange earnings from tourism.
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Under the Department of Immigration and Emigration’s Digital Nomad Visa scheme, the principal applicant is required to demonstrate a minimum monthly remittance of US$2,000.
The published requirements permit a spouse and dependants to accompany the applicant, with an additional US$500 monthly remittance becoming necessary only when the number of dependants exceeds two.
The arithmetic is striking. A principal applicant qualifying at exactly US$2,000 a month has an income equivalent to US$66.67 a day. Accompanied by one dependant, the qualifying remittance falls to the equivalent of US$33.33 per person per day. With two dependants it amounts to just US$22.22 per person per day.
Former Deputy Minister of Tourism Faizer Musthapha PC MP, who has also served in Cabinet, says those numbers appear at odds with the direction in which Sri Lanka should be attempting to take its tourism industry.
Musthapha pointed to Sri Lanka’s performance in 2025, when the country recorded its highest annual tourist arrival figure, while arguing that the more important measure for an economy dependent on foreign exchange is not simply how many visitors arrive but how much economic value each visitor leaves behind.
According to official tourism statistics, the average duration of stay had fallen to around 8.2 days in 2025. Taking official tourism earnings, arrivals and the reported average duration together produces an approximate daily tourism yield of US$164.36 per visitor, Musthapha noted.
Against that background, he questioned the economic logic of setting the Digital Nomad Visa threshold at a level which, for a principal applicant accompanied by one dependant, represents qualifying resources of only US$33.33 per person per day and, with two dependants, only US$22.22.
Several tourism industry stakeholders who spoke to NewsLine expressed similar concerns, describing the US$22-US$33 equivalent threshold as counterproductive if Sri Lanka’s objective is to move towards higher-value rather than simply higher-volume tourism.
The comparison is particularly significant because Sri Lanka has historically generated well over US$100 per tourist per day over several years. In 2023, official tourism statistics put average expenditure per tourist per day at US$164.40, with an average stay of 8.44 nights. In 2024, the corresponding daily expenditure figure rose to US$181.15, while the average stay was 8.42 nights.
The 2025 numbers therefore raise a broader issue. Sri Lanka achieved record arrivals, but the average duration of stay declined and the approximate daily yield calculated from the official statistics slipped from the exceptionally strong level recorded in 2024. The challenge facing tourism policymakers is consequently not simply attracting more people but ensuring that growing arrivals translate into proportionately greater foreign-exchange earnings.
Musthapha said the Digital Nomad Visa should also not be considered in isolation from the wider structural challenges confronting Sri Lanka’s tourism industry. He maintained that these issues were worthy of serious consideration by both the Cabinet and industry stakeholders if the country is serious about increasing tourism yield and spreading its benefits more evenly across the island.
Among those challenges, he identified the absence of robust air connectivity to the Eastern Province. Sri Lanka possesses some of its strongest tourism assets along the eastern coastline, yet reaching those destinations remains considerably more difficult than accessing the established tourism areas of the South.
The contrast with the Southern Province is significant. Even without relying on a fully developed international airport to drive its tourism expansion, the South has benefited enormously from the development of the expressway network. Travelling from Bandaranaike International Airport towards the southern beach resorts has consequently become substantially faster and more convenient, strengthening the accessibility of destinations stretching down the western and southern coastline.
Musthapha’s argument is that tourism infrastructure has to be viewed as part of the product itself.
An attractive beach or hotel cannot achieve its full economic potential if an international visitor must spend a disproportionate amount of his or her holiday travelling to reach it.
Better connectivity, particularly to the East, could therefore increase both geographical tourism distribution and the commercial viability of investments outside the established southern tourism belt.
He also called for a fresh examination of domestic aviation, arguing that previous attempts by private operators to develop commercially viable internal air services had faced an uneven competitive environment.
Musthapha recalled that private aviation companies had at various times been required to compete with domestic passenger services operated by the Sri Lanka Air Force using helicopters and smaller aircraft. While private operators had to meet the normal taxation and commercial costs associated with running an aviation business, he said the Air Force did not operate under an equivalent cost structure. The result, he maintained, was an inherently unequal marketplace. A private-sector entrepreneur required to recover aircraft costs, maintenance, insurance, staffing, regulatory expenses and applicable taxes could find it extremely difficult to compete on price with a State military operator whose underlying costs and fiscal obligations were fundamentally different. Musthapha’s contention is not that the State should withdraw from facilitating domestic aviation, but that policymakers should consider whether commercial passenger services can flourish without a genuinely level playing field. If Sri Lanka wants private capital to invest in reliable scheduled connections to tourism destinations, investors must have a reasonable prospect of competing commercially.
The argument has particular relevance to the East. Reliable domestic air links could substantially reduce travelling time to destinations such as Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Pasikudah and Arugam Bay, potentially opening those regions to visitors unwilling to surrender a large portion of an eight-day holiday to road travel.
That becomes even more significant when the average tourist stay has itself fallen to around eight days. Every hour consumed reaching a destination represents time that cannot be spent – and money that cannot be spent experiencing that destination.
There is an important distinction in the Digital Nomad debate. The US$22.22 and US$33.33 figures are not estimates of what digital nomads will actually spend. They represent the minimum monthly remittance requirement divided between the people permitted to reside in Sri Lanka under the visa. A digital nomad may have substantial savings, assets or income above the minimum and could therefore spend considerably more.
That distinction, however, also goes to the heart of the criticism. The visa establishes the financial test by which Sri Lanka decides who qualifies for a year-long stay.
If the Government’s intention is partly to attract economically valuable long-term residents, critics question why that test has been set at a level dramatically below the daily foreign-exchange yield historically achieved from conventional tourists.
Digital Nomads…
There are compelling arguments in favour of digital nomad visas. Long-stay remote workers provide yearround demand for accommodation, restaurants, transport, telecommunications and other services. They can spread tourism expenditure beyond conventional hotels and resorts and into apartments, guest houses, cafés, small businesses and local communities.
But a long stay does not automatically mean a high-value stay. Someone living in Sri Lanka for twelve months can negotiate long-term accommodation rates, cook at home, use local transport and increasingly consume goods and services as a temporary resident rather than as a conventional tourist.
At an approximate 2025 tourism yield of US$164.36 per visitor per day, 30 days of conventional tourism would represent almost US$4,931 in tourism receipts. By contrast, the minimum remittance required for the principal Digital Nomad Visa applicant – potentially accompanied by two dependants – is US$2,000 for the same period.
Put another way, the US$22.22 per-person daily equivalent for a three-person digital-nomad household represents less than 14 per cent of the approximately US$164 daily tourism yield calculated for 2025. For an applicant with one dependant, the US$33.33 equivalent is about one-fifth.
No tourist arriving in Sri Lanka is required to spend US$164 a day, nor should the tourism-yield statistic be confused with an immigration requirement. The comparison instead exposes a policy question: if Sri Lanka has historically been capable of generating considerably more than US$100 per visitor per day, what economic objective is served by establishing such a modest financial floor for foreigners being permitted to reside here for an entire year?
For Musthapha, however, the debate needs to go considerably further than changing a number on a visa application. Sri Lanka must consider the entire tourism value chain: whom it wants to attract, how much those visitors can contribute, how easily they can reach destinations around the island and whether the regulatory environment encourages private investment capable of improving the tourism product.
Record arrivals are valuable, but arrivals alone are an incomplete measure of success. Tourism ultimately has to be measured against foreign-exchange earnings, visitor yield, investment, employment and how widely those economic benefits are distributed across Sri Lanka.
The Digital Nomad Visa therefore presents a useful opportunity for a wider review rather than an argument for abandoning the concept. The Government could reconsider the income threshold and treatment of dependants while simultaneously examining domestic aviation, eastern connectivity and the competitive conditions confronting private operators willing to invest in tourism infrastructure.
Be that as it may, the central contradiction remains difficult to ignore. Sri Lanka’s conventional tourism industry has consistently generated well above US$100 per visitor per day in recent years, yet its new Digital Nomad Visa can admit a principal applicant and two dependants on a qualifying monthly remittance equivalent to just US$22.22 per person per day.
Mr Musthapha noted that if Sri Lanka genuinely intends to move from counting tourists to measuring their economic value, the debate cannot end with how many people arrive.
He stressed, “It must include who they are, what they contribute, where they travel and whether the country has built the infrastructure necessary to persuade them to spend more of both their time and their money here.”
