The tourism industry is looking at increasing its share of contributions towards the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The Reserve Bank of Fiji has forecasted that tourism will contribute 27.8 per cent towards Fiji’s GDP this year.
Ministry of Public Enterprise, Tourism and Communication permanent secretary Elizabeth Powell said they were looking at increasing their contributions from 27.8 per cent this year to 40.6 per cent in 10 years time.
“We are working to increasing the GDP contribution from $1.8billion predicted for 2011 to $3.7billion in 2021,” she said.
Her comments were supported by Tourism Fiji’s chief executive officer Josefa Tuamoto, who said Tourism Fiji was working towards these figures and government’s projections.
“We support predictions made by the permanent secretary and we are working towards achieving those figures,” Mr Tuamoto said.
“We are now trying to move away from our traditional visitor sources such as Australia and New Zealand because they already know about Fiji and are focusing on getting visitors from Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) .”
Mr Tuamoto said BRIC countries were the way to go and that was their focus.
“The global travel trend is moving up again and it is quite a healthy trend. The Bureau of Statistics revealed that visitor numbers are up by 3.7 per cent so that is a good sign.”
-ends-