FIJI continues to dominate in tourism, recording the highest number of arrivals in the South Pacific region with a 36.9 per cent market share in the March Quarter of 2018.
This was noted in the South Pacific Tourism Organisation’s (SPTO) quarterly review of tourist arrivals to the Pacific Island countries (PICs) for the first quarter of 2018 released this week.
However, the review noted that Fiji’s dominating market share in the first quarter of this year was below the 40 per cent share witnessed in the December quarter of 2017.
Fiji recorded a total of 171,504 arrivals during the first quarter of this year, a 5.1 per cent growth when compared with the same quarterly period in 2017 which recorded 163,226 visitors.
Data in red are SPTO estimates based on average of the past four months.
The country’s visitor numbers were mainly dominated by its traditional markets – Australia and New Zealand with 41.1 per cent and 15.8 per cent shares respectively.
USA rallied behind at 11 per cent with China at 8.3 per cent whilst Pacific Islands edged closely at 8.2 per cent.
All the other destinations shared the remaining 15.6 per cent of which Europe accounted for 4.2 per cent and Other Asia 4 per cent.
Second behind Fiji’s dominating market shares in the region’s arrivals is French Polynesia with shares of 9.7 per cent in the first quarter.
This was followed by Palau at 7.3 per cent while PNG edged closely at 7.2 per cent, Samoa 6.8 per cent, Cook Islands 6.5 per cent, Timor Leste 6.0 per cent, New Caledonia at an estimated 5.9 per cent and Vanuatu with 5.1 per cent.
The remaining 8.7 per cent was shared among all the other destinations in the region.
Meanwhile, the First Quarter of 2018 witnessed tourist arrivals from the region’s major source markets dropped by 16.5 per cent, but outshined the corresponding quarter last year by 6.1 cent.
The deceleration against the December Quarter was underlined by the decline in tourist arrivals from the top three leading markets Australia, New Zealand, and USA.
Arrivals from United Kingdom, Europe, Other Asia and Pacific Islands also fell during the quarter.
Meanwhile, the increase over March quarter of 2017 was fueled by rising arrivals from all the major source markets except for Japan and Other Asia which fell by 3.3 per cent and 0.1 per cent, respectively.
Australia and New Zealand also the traditional leading markets for the region in the first quarter, recorded shares of 26.7 per cent and 16.0 per cent, respectively.
USA the third highest source market registered 11.2 per cent, followed by Europe and Other Asia at 9.2 per cent each, China at 8.6 per cent and Pacific Islands with shares of 8.1 per cent.
The other source markets made up the remaining 11 per cent at the end of the quarter.
