Sri Lanka aims to make tourism a key component of post-war economic growth with a new strategy aimed at luring more high-spenders and increasing earnings and employment, an official said.

Tourist arrivals were growing at 40 percent this year and had already exceeded 500,000. "Last year to get that number we had to wait till the ninth month," Godahewa said at the launch of the new tourism strategy. ''The outlook is extremely good." Arrivals had grown by 46 percent in 2010 after the island's 30-year ethnic war ended in May 2009.

The strategy aims to put in place systems, processes and infrastructure to achieve the target of attracting 2.5 million tourists by 2016 and generate 2.75 billion US dollars in earnings compared with 500 million dollars in 2010 when 650,000 people visited the island.

It also aims to lure more high-spenders and to increase average spending per tourist per day up to 200 US dollars. "We also want to bring in foreign investment for tourism," Godahewa said, noting that most investment coming in after the war was for tourism.

The government target is to build room capacity to 45,000 rooms over the next five years, adding 22,500 rooms to the current 22,500.

"We also want to create more jobs in the tourism industry, increasing direct and indirect employment to 500,000 by 2016 from 125,000 today," Godahewa said.

Key focus areas will be to attract visitors from new markets in Asia, creating a more conducive environment for tourism, improving the country's image, and not neglecting domestic tourist who kept the industry going during the 30-year war.