Students top Visitor Arrivals as at 31 December, 2017. >

Student arrivals contributed the highest to our annual visitor arrivals last year.

There were 18, 263 student arrivals. This is according to the Fiji Bureau of Statistic’s Provisional Visitor Arrivals report for 2017.

The second group of arrivals comprised professional workers (15, 433) followed by retirees, housewives and children (12,456).

Of all the countries who contributed to the arrivals, New Zealand recorded the biggest jump followed by USA and Australia.

The bureau recorded a 50,564 increase in our visitor arrivals last year compared to the previous year.

Last year, our annual visitor arrivals reached 842,884.

This is a 6.4 per cent increase compared to the record of 792,320 in 2016.

For the first time ever, July had crossed the monthly visitor 90, 000 mark with 90,108 arrivals.

According to the figures provided by the bureau, Fiji’s top two source markets are Australia and New Zealand with an average daily arrivals of 1,002 and 506 respectively.

A total of 630,700 (74.8 per cent) visitors arrived into the country for holiday purposes and 47,492 (8.8 per cent) came to visit their friends or relatives.

Also, 33,222 (3.9 per cent) came for business purposes while 104,470 (12.5 per cent) came for other reasons.

December Visitors by Gender and Age

The majority of the visitors to Fiji in December last year were between the ages of 25 to 64 (62.8 per cent).

This accounts for the vast majority of the working age population.

Children aged 14 and below accounted for 17.2 per cent of the December visitor arrivals while 13.9 per cent were youths aged 15-24.

Therefore 6.1 per cent were those in the retirement age group of 65 and over.