In 2006, the islands of Tahiti welcomed the highest number of visitors since 2001, considered Tahiti’s benchmark year in tourism arrivals. The Minister of Tourism and the Environment, Maina Sage, announced last Wednesday that the volume of visitors last year was 221,549, up 6.5% from 208,067 visitors in 2005. The Minister of Tourism also announced that the US market (including Hawaii) remains the number one contributor of visitor arrivals to the islands of Tahiti, and North America ranked second to Europe (including France) by region / continent.

North American visitors represented 36.7% of the total number of tourists, just 0.4% behind the European market. The US market, with 74,458 visitors, comprised 33.6% of the total market share, while Canada comprised 3.04% of maket share with 6,731 visitors. These numbers are an increase from the visitor's volume in 2005 -- 32.8% from the US and 2.7% from Canada. Within the North American market, Canada’s share of visitors went from 7.5% in 2005, to 8.3%, indicating that Canada is becoming stronger in both the North America market and worldwide.

The North American market grew at a greater rate than the overall visitor rate. North American visitors increased by 9.9% while the general volume went up 6.5%. The number of US tourists (including Hawaii) went up by 6,132, a 9.0% increase over 2005, and the number of Canadian tourists went up 1,177, a 21.2% increase.

The volume of stopover visitors also increased. The number of tourists worldwide that chose the islands of Tahiti as a stopover destination went up from 34,114 to 45,866, a 34.5% increase. This increase was encouraged by Air Tahiti Nui’s connecting flights to Australia and New Zealand from the North American gateways and Paris.

The report also highlighted that there is an increase in hotel capacity. In December 2006, a survey of hotel capacity revealed that there are currently 3,436 hotel rooms available in Tahiti, representing an increase of 275 hote rooms from the 3,161 rooms available in 2005. Even with an 8.6% increase of capacity, the average hotel occupancy rate increased 4% overall for 2006.

These positive results are most encouraging. A special thank you to all our partners who put so much effort into the North American market for the islands of Tahiti. As always, the TTNA team looks forward to working closely with all of our partners to achieve results in 2007 and beyond.