International visitor arrivals to the Asia and the Pacific region registered a strong growth of 8.2%, up from 7.3%.

Global tourist arrivals also recorded 6.9% growth in the first quarter of 2018, outstripping the 4.9% gain in the December quarter of 2017 according to the South Pacific Tourism Organisation.

SPTO Chief Executive Officer, Christopher Cocker says the positive result reflected a continuation of the solid trend witnessed in 2017 triggered by strong confidence in global tourism.

Tourist arrivals to the Pacific ACP and SPTO member countries reached a provisional 464,593 in the March quarter 1 of 2018.

This outperformed the March quarter of 2017 by 6.2%, but weakened against the December quarter 2017 by 16.5%.

Cocker says the positive performance against the March quarter of 2017 was boosted by rising arrivals in a majority of the destinations including Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Palau, Vanuatu, Fiji, French Polynesia and Samoa.

Arrivals from the PICs major source markets recorded a 6.1% increase against the March quarter 1 of 2017 but fell by 16.6% over the December quarter 4.

The year-on-year quarter growth was attributed to increase in arrivals from majority of the source markets with double-digit increase from New Zealand by 12.8%, USA 10.1%, and Europe 10.7%.

On market shares, the top leading markets include Australia at 26.7%, New Zealand 16%, USA 11.2%, Europe and Other Asia with 9.2% each and China at 8.6%.