AUSTRALIA has been recorded as the country that has the most nationals visiting Solomon Islands in the first quarter of this year.
Government Statistician Douglas Kimi revealed this while releasing the visitors statistics produced by the Solomon Islands National Statistics Office (SINSO) recently.
The travels were being recorded from visitors by country of residence, visitors by month, tourists, visitors by purpose of visit, visitors by age group, visitors by occupation and visitor by carrier.
“Australia continue to dominate the ranks of international arrivals to the Solomon Islands with 34.9 percent,” Mr Kimi said.
“The second largest group of visitors were from Other Asia with 15.1 percent, followed by Fiji 7.2 percent, Other Pacific 6.5 percent, Papua New Guinea 6.2 percent, New Zealand 5.7 percent and the United States of America with 5.1 percent.”
On visitor arrivals by month, Kimi said the month of March recorded the highest number of arrivals in the first quarter of 2018 with 2,360 visitors. “This was followed by month of January with a total of 2,081 visitors and February the least with 1,855 visitors.
On tourist, Kimi said 1,941 tourists arrived in the first quarter of 2018 and they spent an average of 15.5 days in the country.
“Australian residents still made up the highest proportion of tourists with 38.7 per cent for the quarter and stayed in the country for an average of 11 days. Residents from Other Asians made up the next largest group of tourists 11.5 percent, followed by United States of America 8.6 percent, Other Pacific 6.3 percent, China 5.3 percent, while Papua New Guinea, Japan and Other Europe with 4.2 percent.”
Kimi added that the most common reason for visitors visiting the country during the quarter was for other reason with 28.3 percent followed by visiting for holiday or vacation 27.0 percent, Business and Conference 26.1 percent, visiting friends and relatives 14.7 percent and transit & stop over with 3.8 percent.
“The distribution of visitor arrivals by broad age groups for first quarter 2018 showed that 77.1 percent of visitors were in the 25 years to 64 years age range.
“The youngest age group, 0 -14 years, represented 4.5 percent of the arrivals while the oldest age group, 65 years and over made up 7.1 per cent of total visitor arrivals. The remaining 4.6 percent were visitors who did not state their age. Male visitors represented more than half of the total visitor’s arrivals with 70.9 percent and female visitors made up 29.1 percent of arrivals in the quarter,” Kimi stated.
He added that visitor by Occupation showed that the “Professional and technical” category made up the largest percentage of occupations with 30.8 percent during the quarter. This was followed by visitors who stated their occupation was from the other occupation group 29.9 percent, administration & managerial positions 14.1 percent, no work 9.2 and production and related workers with 5.3 percent.
“The most popular carriers during the quarter were Solomon Airlines who carried 43.6 percent of total visitors, followed by Air Niugini with 29.5 percent and Virgin Australia 18 percent,” Kimi said.
–SINSO PRESS
