Tourism Solomons is celebrating its best H1 result for over four years with arrival figures for the period January to June 2024 up 26.5 per cent.
The figures released by the Solomon Islands National Statistics Office (SINSO) show a total of 11,333 international travellers visited the destination across the six-month period, the number eclipsing the 8957 figure recorded for Q2 2023.
The 2024 numbers are the best result achieved since the first half of 2019 when the Solomon Islands welcomed 12,742 international visitors.
Australian arrivals continued to dominate, the 7.2 percent increase from 3490 to 3743 constituting 33 per cent of overall visitor intake.
The destination’s other key source markets – the US, Fiji and New Zealand all showed positive growth at 13.2 per cent, 23.6 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.
The biggest growth was achieved by visitor arrival numbers from Papua New Guinea which rose from 572 to 1172, an increase of 106.7 percent.
Commenting on the Q2 result, Tourism Solomons acting CEO, Dagnal Dereveke said the national tourist office’s concerted marketing efforts were obviously paying dividends.
While much of our international marketing activity has been concentrated on the traditionally strong Australian and New Zealand markets, our efforts in Papua New Guinea are really bearing fruit,” Dereveke said.
“We know, alike Fiji, much of our visitation from those countries is very much business oriented.”
“These consistent increases present a strong opportunity for Tourism Solomons to further expand its activities in both the Fiji and Papua New Guinea markets and highlights the potential for our domestic operators to tap into these markets by targeting travellers coming for business.”
Feature image: iStock
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