Tourism earnings up $10.2m

TOURISM earnings in the first quarter of this year was estimated by the Fiji Bureau of Statistics to be $209.4million.

"This represents an increase of $10.2m of 5 per cent over the gross earnings of quarter one, 2010," the bureau said.

"The increase is largely due to the increase in total visitor days by 65,519 days or 5.2 per cent."

More than 50 per cent of the tourism income was from Australian visitors who brought in $103.4m followed by New Zealand at $20.8m.

The Americans were the third largest revenue earners for Fiji at $19.1 followed by Pacific island residents at $14.3m.

The breakdown of tourism receipts from the other countries are as follows rest of Asia $13.9m, continental Europe $13.3m, United Kingdom $9.7m, Canada $6.1m, Japan $4m, Korea $2m, Malaysia $0.2m and other countries $2.6m.

Source - fijitimes