Solomon Islands half-year visitor numbers best since 2019

Honiara, Solomon Islands – Tourism Solomons is celebrating its best second quarter result for over four years with visitor arrival figures for the period January to June 2024 showing a 26.5 percent increase over the same period in 2023.

The figures released by the Solomon Islands National Statistics Office (SINSO) show a total of 11,333 international travellers visited the destination across the six month period, the number eclipsing the 8957 figure recorded for Q2 2023.

The 2024 numbers are the best result achieved since Q2 in the record breaking 2019 when the Solomon Islands welcomed 12,742 international visitors.

As in previous results, Australian arrivals continued to dominate, the 7.2 percent increase from 3490 to 3743 constituting 33 percent of overall visitor intake.

The destination’s other key source markets – the US, Fiji and New Zealand all showed positive growth at 13.2 percent, 23.6 percent and 30 percent respectively.

By far and away the biggest growth was achieved by visitor arrival numbers from PNG which rose from 572 to 1172, an increase of 106.7 percent,

Commenting on the Q2 result, Tourism Solomons CEO (acting), Dagnal Dereveke said the national tourist office’s concerted marketing efforts were obviously paying dividends.

While much of our international marketing activity has been concentrated on the traditionally strong Australian and New Zealand markets, our efforts in PNG are really bearing fruit,” Mr Dereveke said.

“We know, alike Fiji, much of our visitation from those countries is very much business oriented.

“These consistent increases present a strong opportunity for Tourism Solomons to further expand its activities in both the Fiji and PNG markets and highlights the potential for our domestic operators to tap into these markets by targeting travellers coming for business.

“With large numbers of Fijian and PNG citizens based in Honiara, the VFR (visiting friends and relatives) element from both countries also offers great potential for our local industry.”