Good year 2012 for French Polynesia

28 May 2013  2037 | World Travel News

PARIS- French Polynesia managed to record a growth of 3.8% in 2012 with 168,978 tourists visiting the French Pacific territory. However, the evolution of arrivals has been contrasted from one market to the other. Not to a surprise comes the weakening of demand from Europe. From 2011 to 2012, total arrivals from Europe are down by 2.5%, slipping from 64,272 to 62,661 tourists last year. The market share of Europe continues to shrink, getting from 39.5% of all arrivals in 2011 to 37.1% last year.

France managed to record a modest growth of 0.2% with close to 36,000 tourists (due to an important VFR traffic), stopping its decline in arrivals, which started back to 2007. France visitors remain however of utmost importance for Tahiti and its islands. French tourists have the longest length of stay of any incoming market with an average of 26.7 days. This represents over 959,000 tourist overnights, of which half of them are in paid accommodation. In total overnights, France represents consequently 40% of all overnights in French Polynesia.

Europe was affected by double-digit declines in arrivals from Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Russia. In total, European tourist arrivals (outside France) were down by 5.9%.

However, this negative evolution has been compensated by good growth from the Pacific area, North America and partially from Asia. Growth out of the Pacific area has been phenomenal last year, with total tourist arrivals up by 19.1% to 22,000. Australia is the largest source market out of the Pacific representing 10,000 arrivals, up by 24% over 2011. New Zealand performed even better with numbers up by 34% to almost 7,200 travellers. Both Australia and New Zealand are expected to grow again this year.

With close to 60,000 tourists in 2012, North America remains the largest source market for French Polynesia representing 35.4% of all arrivals. The USA alone generated 52,858 visitors. However, while the USA is up by 7 %, Canada was down by 5.7 %. Interestingly, cruise excursionists – a traditional market segment for the USA which represents half of all cruise travellers to Tahiti, is down by 3.1%. But other modes of transportation are up by 8.4%.

Last but not least, Asia was doing fairly well with total visitor’s numbers up by 3.3%. With 16,500 arrivals, Asia represents now a market share of 9.8% of all tourist arrivals into French Polynesia and it is likely that it will pass the 10% mark in 2013. While countries such as China and Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea record double-digit growth rates (jumping in some case by over 50%), Asian arrivals continue to be however dominated by Japan. The latter generated a total of 12,989 tourists in 2012 in stagnation over 2011. This explains why growth from Asia remains moderate and is still below its peak a decade ago when total arrivals from the Asian continent surpassed over 21,000 tourists.

 

Sourced: TravelDailyNews

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