China’s Top Travel magazine named Sri Lankan Airlines the Best Airline in South Asia at the 10th Annual Top Travel Awards, recognizing Sri Lankan’s continuous efforts at expanding travel between China and Sri Lanka.

Wang Jianmei, the Chief Editor of Top Travel, said: “The Award of Best Airline in South Asia that Top Travel bestowed upon Sri Lankan Airlines is well earned. We are pleased to see that more and more Chinese tourists choose Sri Lankan Airlines to travel to Sri Lanka, Maldives, Seychelles and many more destinations in the world.”

Ravindran Veeraperumal, Sri Lankan Airlines Country Manager China, who received the award on behalf of Sri Lankan, said: “This is a great acknowledgement and encouragement for our efforts to promote travel on Sri Lankan. We strive to maintain our highest standard and delight our customers. On behalf of Sri Lankan Airlines, I would like to thank Top Travel for this award and all my team members for making this possible. With the commitment and support of our entire airline, we expect to win many more awards in the future.’

China is now Sri Lanka's second largest tourism market, behind India. A total of 271,577 Chinese tourists visited Sri Lanka in 2016, a 26% year on year increase, according to statistics of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority.

Sri Lankan recently adopted a new strategy of focusing on the Asia and Middle East region and added 11 new destinations in Asia during the last quarter of 2016, also increasing services to many of its existing destinations throughout Asia. It has the largest foreign airline network in India with over 100 flights to 11 cities and is also the largest international airline serving the Maldives, with 25 flights per week.