The South Pacific Tourism Organisation is looking forward to more development in tourism for Melanesian countries following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the MSG Secretariat.

This is a first of its kind agreement signed between the two organisations reflecting a new milestone for engagement in a meaningful way.

The organisations are expected to work together to collaborate and partner in tourism planning, policy-making; environmental and commercial sustainability, information and data sharing, shared product development and marketing and networking.

The Agreement also makes reference to collaboration with airlines on product development and packaging and capacity building and training as well as MSG research.

SPTO chief executive, Chris Cocker, says regional visitor arrivals reached two million last year which is a 4% growth from the 1.6 million in 2015, higher than the world average growth rate of 3.9%.

Cocker says there is great potential for Solomon Islands and PNG in cruise tourism and niche tourism, learning from Fiji’s example which currently has 40% of the Pacific’s regional market share.