A total of 9,879 arrivals were recorded in the fourth quarter of 2022 since the lifting of travel restrictions and reopening of international borders in July 2022.
This was an increase of 84.4% compared to the previous quarter (3rd quarter 2022).
Releasing the report on Monday 13th February 2023, the Government Statistician Douglas Kimi said compared to the same quarter a year ago, an increase of 741.5% was recorded.
He said returning residents made up 56.8% of arrivals for the fourth quarter 2022.
This was followed by Visitors with 42.6% of arrivals and the remaining 0.6% were Intending residents.
“Visitor arrivals for the fourth quarter increased by 69.6% to 4,207 visitors, compared to the third quarter 2022 figure of 2,481 visitors.
“There was an increase of 899.3% in visitor arrivals from fourth quarter 2021 to fourth quarter 2022.”
Mr Kimi said visitors by Country of Residence for the fourth quarter 2022 showed that Australia (42.2%) recorded the largest group of visitors to the Solomon Islands.
“This was an increase of 71.0% arriving at 1,775 Australian visitors by end of the quarter compared to the third quarter of 2022.
“The next largest group of visitors were from United States of America (8.6%) followed by Other Asia (8.2%), Fiji (7.9%), Papua New Guinea (6.4%), New Zealand (5.9%), Other Pacific (3.6%), Vanuatu (3.0%), China (2.8%), Other Europe (2.8%), and France (1.9%).”
Visitor arrivals by month showed that November recorded the highest number of arrivals in the fourth quarter of 2022 with 1,424 visitors.
This was followed by month of December with a total of 1,419 visitors and October the least with 1,364 visitors.
With the reopening of international borders in July 2022, the fourth quarter of 2022 recorded a total of 1,509 tourists.
Out of these number 1,422 tourists are reported to be having holiday and vacation as their purpose of travel.
The tourists spent an average of 17 days in the country with Australia making up the highest proportion of tourists (43.7%) for the quarter.
The most common reason for visitors visiting the Solomon Islands during the quarter was for Holiday and Vacation (33.8%).
This was followed by Business and Conference (26.2%), Other Reason (20.8%), Visit Friends/Relatives (17.1%), and 2.1% for Transit and Stop over.
