Ritika Pratap 
Fiji is seeing a change in the demography of its visitors.
ANZ Senior Pacific Economist Kishti Sen says Fiji’s traditional visitor segment has been young families.
According to Sen, people in the 1–14 years and 25–49 years cohorts accounted for 61.2% of all arrivals in 2019.
But he adds that that percentage has steadily dropped to 58.6% in 2024 and currently stands at 57.7%.
At the same time, the number of visitors in the 65+ age group has been rising.
In 2019, this cohort reached 77,115 and accounted for 8.6% of all short-term travelers.
At present, Sen says the number of visitors in the 65+ age group has reached 113,302 arrivals. This is 11.5% of total visitors, up 46.9% on 2019 arrivals.
According to Sen, this cohort is the only age group that has been consistently rising in numbers since Fiji reopened its borders in late 2021.
It is now the highest of all age groups visiting Fiji, up from fourth in
2019.
Sen adds that the other age groups have lost their growth momentum in recent months after increasing initially.
Kishti Sen
Most of the arrivals in the 65+ age group are couples, as the number of male and female visitors in this cohort of short-term arrivals are about the same.
And Sen says they are coming from Australia, New Zealand and the US.
In 2023, Fiji surpassed its previous record of 894,389 visitors by attracting 929,740 visitors, then did that again in 2024 with 982,389 short-term arrivals.
For the first nine months of this year, visitor arrivals were up from the 2024 levels and Fiji is poised to break the 990,000 visitor threshold by the end of this year.
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