Gov’t aims to attract more overseas visitors this year
By CHARLEY PIRINGI
THE Government is targeting a 9% growth of international visitor arrivals this year.
Prime Minister Rick Houenipwela made the statement during the 2018 Tourism in Focus, held at the Mendana Hotel, Tuesday.
The event gathered stakeholders and tourism operators in the country to discuss and come up with new innovative ideas and approaches that will drive the positive changes in the industry.
Mr Houenipwela said that in order to realize and achieve the target, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau (SIVB) need to cooperate and support stakeholders to build a momentum with strategic and clinical approaches to its activities.
In September 2017, the global tourism performance registered a strong growth at 6.9% slightly more than double the performance at the same period in 2017.
“Having seen the increase in 2017, I have no doubts that 2018 will be the year to push new boundaries and to challenge the status quo so that visitor arrivals can grow in leaps and bounds to drive new investments to our humble destinations,” the prime minister said.
Mr Houenipwela said to translate this fundamental dream to reality, we must adopt a disruptive approach to speed up the transition.
Meanwhile, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Andrew Nihopora said that whilst tourism industry is slowly growing in the country, the industry is still “living on borrowed time”.
“Tourism has not been a priority of the successive governments. Our challenge is how to make tourism sustainable due to budgetary constraints,” Mr Nihopara said.
Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau Chief Executive officer Josefa Tuamoto also echoed the same challenges they face every year.
“We want growth in tourism, but still our main challenges still on budgetary constraints,” Mr Tuamoto pointed out.
Among the presenters during the conference, Solomon Airline Chief Executive Officer, Brett Gebers said that Solomon Islands economy can’t grow without tourism.
He said that whilst the airline has always behind the growth of tourism in the country, there has not been any significant change over the past five years.
The Tourism in Focus event concludes last night at the Rove Police club with a Gala night and presentation of awards to successful tourism operators.
