Earnings from the tourism sector is expected to rake in an estimated $910 million this year, reflecting an 11 percent increase from the previous year.
Reserve Bank of Fiji Governor Sada Reddy made the revelation while addressing delegates at the Tourism Forum currently underway on Plantation Islands in the Yasawa's.
Reddy highlighted that tourism earnings averaged around $820 million in the last 3 years, compared with $250 million for remittances, $200 million for sugar exports and $130 million for fish receipts.
Earnings from other exports such as garments and mineral water averaged around $100 million.
He also outlined that employment in the hotel industry has increased over the years, rising from 26,700 in 2003 to approximately 39,000 in 2008 and preliminary estimates show that the hotel industry employment may be around 40,000 now.
The RBF Governor also told the stakeholders that visitor arrivals for the first 5 months of this year rose by over 22 percent to 217,000, over the levels in 2009.
He said the industry expects to hit 600,000 visitors this year and it this is achieved, then this will be the highest visitor
arrivals on record.
The outlook for visitor arrivals for 2011 and 2012 also look very promising with arrivals expected to reach 660,000 by 2012.
Reddy said there are challenges moving forward and one area that could easily become a constraint to future tourism growth would be the availability of a good mix of hotel rooms.
Reddy said this maybe adequate now but in 2 to 3 years, this will definitely become an issue and therefore, investment in more hotels will be critically important to sustain the current rate of growth of visitor arrivals.
Another important challenge highlighted by Reddy is that the industry has a relatively low retention rate at around 44 percent.
He said in comparison with other countries, Fiji retains much less of the tourism dollar when compared with other developing countries at between 50-60 percent and advanced countries at between 80-90 percent.
Story by: Roneel Lal
$910 million expected from tourism sector
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