Provisional visitor arrivals to Fiji last month totalled 16,502, about a 30 per cent decrease compared to December last year when Fiji reopened its international borders.
However, when compared to January 2021, it is an increase of a little over 15 per cent, but it is still well below pre-COVID levels, based on data available on the Bureau of Stats website.
In January 2020, Fiji’s visitor arrivals stood at 65,386, nearly 75 per cent more when compared to January 2022 arrivals, a variance that the bureau says is “expected and similar to last year” attributing it “to the continuing worldwide COVID 19 pandemic and restrictions on international travel and the closure of most international borders.”
The majority of Fiji’s tourists last month, as has been the case in previous years, were from Australia accounting for 85 percent of arrivals, followed by the US.
Meanwhile, as Fiji gradually relaxes some of its COVID-19 restrictions, the latest being plans to remove the 3-day mandatory hotel stay upon arriving, it has added nine more countries to its list of travel partner countries (TPC), taking the total number of countries under the TPC to date to 66.
Mid last month, Thailand, Taiwan, Mongolia, Oman, and Macau were added on and today, four more including India.
