Visitor Arrivals Note Slight Change In January Stats
"Over the past six decades, tourism has experienced continued expansion and diversification to become one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors."
Saturday 09 March 2019 | 14:20
Tourism is an important economic activity in most countries around the world.
Over the past six decades, tourism has experienced continued expansion and diversification to become one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors.
Tourism Ranking
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As a worldwide export category, tourism ranks third after chemicals and fuels and ahead of automotive products and food.
According to the World Travel & Tourism Council’s latest annual research, in conjunction with Oxford Economics, the Travel & Tourism’s contribution to world GDP outpaced the global economy for the eighth consecutive year in 2018.
Similarly for us, tourism industry has become Fiji’s largest source of foreign exchange earnings.
It provides vital support to our Balance of Payment and is reflected in the level of foreign reserves we hold.
Statistic check
Provisional numbers released by the Fiji Bureau of Statistics show that visitor arrivals for January 2019 totalled 63,807, an increase of 1.9 per cent compared to a year earlier.
Looking at the purpose of visits, visitors arriving for holiday purposes accounted for 73.8 per cent of total arrivals, 8.7 per cent came to visit their friends or relatives, 3.0 per cent came for business purposes, while 14.5 per cent visited Fiji for other reasons.
In the moving twelve monthly numbers ending January 2019, the total number of visitors to Fiji increased by 3.7 per centcompared with the same period in 2018.
The moving six months to January 2019, showed that visitor arrivals increased by 2.8 per cent over the corresponding period in 2018, up from 442,738 to 455,073.
The majority of visitors to Fiji in January 2019 were in the age range 25-64 (61.9 per cent), which accounts for the vast majority of the working age population.
Children aged 14 and below accounted for 18.6 per cent of the January visitor arrivals; 13.0 per cent were youths aged 15-24 with the remaining 6.5 per cent comprising those in the predominantly retirement age group of 65 and over.
Fiji’s earnings from tourism in 2018 stood at $2,010.3 million. Earnings went up by 4.5 per cent ($86.0 million) when compared to the 2017 figure of $1,924.3 million.
The December quarter of 2018 earnings from tourism stood at $522.9 million.
This was an increase of 1.9 per cent ($9.9 million) over the December quarter of 2017.
Apart from income generation and job creation, tourism sector greatly impacts the level of infrastructure development and allows the country to display the multitude of cultural diversity and range of products and services.
Although not all the contribution from tourism sector can be readily quantified, it does show its magnitude of impact on the growth and general advancement of our domestic economy
Feedback: maraia.vula@fijisun.com.fj
