After attracting a record international visitor number across Q3, the Solomon Islands has started Q4 with another record-breaking incident.
Statistics published this week by the Solomon Islands National Statistics Office or SINSO point out a total of 2500 overseas travelers visited the destination in last year October, a 10.76 percent growth over 2257 recorded visitors for the same month in 2016.
Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau CEO, Josefa ‘Jo’ Tuamoto, who described the September 2016 result as “going off the Richter scale” said the continuing strong result would take the destination’s international visitor intake well beyond projections set in early 2017.
“This keeps us bang on target for a very strong finish to 2017,” Mr Tuamoto said.
The 10-month period figures demonstrate the destination has successfully lured a total of 21,087 international visitors. This accounted 13.4 percent growth over the 18,638 figure attained for January-October 2016 with each of the Solomon Islands’ main source markets recording annual growth.
Again, Australian visitation dominated with 997 total numbers recorded for the month of October, representing 11.2 percent growth over the 878 recorded last year and accounting arrivals of 39.1 percent.
Following the Guadalcanal campaign, the US numbers have seen gradually increasing, the 75th anniversary celebrations in August, grew by 23.5 percent. On the other hand, New Zealand numbers grew by 5.5 percent respectively.
The highest increase in October came from China, with Chinese visitor numbers growing 75 percent, from 80 to 140, interestingly, a factor CEO Tuamoto holds the inroads responsible for the SIVB is making into the Chinese dive market.
“We’re working off a small base here but the Chinese dive market is huge and we’ve gone to considerable efforts to showcase our amazing diving in that part of the world,” he said.
