French territory

Tourism boom in French territory

French Polynesia is in the middle of a tourism boom.

A combination of fac tors including increased airline capacity, a a new cruise ship pattern and, possibly, a decline, in the early part of the year, of New Caledonia’s attractiveness as a destination have all com bined to post a 39 per cent increase in the first five months.

The number of tourists was 64,746 compared with 46,414 for the first five months of 1985.

Figures for the first quarter are even more spectacular when the total showed an in crease of 44 per cent over the same period for 1985.

Arrivals from the US in the first quarter were up by a massive 83.5 per cent from 13,385 to 24,566.

And despite the nosediving Aussie dollar, arrivals from Aus tralia were up 20 per cent from 1,770 to 2,124 in the first three months.

Average stay also increased from 8.92 days to 9.28.

The French Polynesia Tourist Department’s Statis-tiques Touristiques puts the increase down to American Hawaii Cruises’ new program of inter nal island cruises.

The territory recorded 8,387 tourist nights for the duration of one cruise on board The Liberty.

A large number of the cruis ers, says the report, spent nights before or after their voyage in

traditional Polynesian hotels.

It estimates the number of hotel nights spent by such people at 30,000 13.5 per cent of the total for the period.

However, even without the

Liberty cruises, total tourist arri vals were still up by 12.6 per cent over the period.

The number of scheduled aircraft seats available to the territory also increased by 10

per cent, from 69,003 to 75,624.

UTA, Qantas and Air New Zealand returned seat occupan cy rates of 75.6 per cent, 80.5 per cent and 81.5 per cent respectively.

The number of non-sche duled seats also increased dramatically in the first quarter from 1,133 to 14,310 mainly, said Statistiques, due to the twice-monthly charter flown by Transamerica Airlines.