Fiji records best ever October for AU visitor arrivals

Fiji is bang on target for a record breaking year from the Australian market with Tourism Fiji Regional Director Australia, Paresh Pant predicting more than 300,000 Australians will have visited the destination when final 12 month figures are released later this year.

Tourism Fiji Regional Director Australia, Paresh Pant

Mr Pant’s comments follow the release of Fiji Bureau of Statistics showing 32,101 Australians travelled to the destination in October 2010.

The 32,101 figure brings the total of Australian visitor arrivals for the 10-month period to 263,494.

This in itself represents a six per cent increase over the 248,589 Australian visitor total Fiji achieved across the entire 12-month period January-December 2009.

“Provisional figures received from our Australian industry partners indicate we have also done extremely well in November and December from this market,” Mr Pant said.

“If these bear fruit, and we are confident they will, we  will definitely cross the 300,000 for the first time which is a massive achievement for us.”

Australian figures again continued to dominate Fiji’s overall visitor arrival picture with the 32,101 figure constituting a huge 54.14 per cent of the total 59,290 international visitors visiting the destination in October.

October figures from other key international source markets also showed growth.

These included New Zealand (plus 6.52 per cent) and the USA (plus 7.2 per cent).

Fiji again registered impressive gains, albeit off small numbers, from both the China and India markets which increased by 58.27 per cent and 51 per cent, respectively.

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