The Central Statistics Office (CSO) released its forecast for tourist arrivals for 2011, which stood at 980,000 tourists compared to 934,827 tourists who visited in 2010.
The figure represents a growth of 4.8 per cent over the period.
Interestingly, the figures are below the forecast of the Ministry of Tourism and Leisure, which has predicted 1 million tourists for 2011.
According to the head of the Economic Intelligence Unit, Sudesh Lallchand, the figures of the ministry are very optimistic and the target of 1 million is achievable.
“We forecast 99,000 tourists in January, 2011 compared to 91,857 during the same period last year and the actual figures were 102,000. So the 7.1 per cent growth across all destinations in 2011 is achievable,” said Lallchand.
He added that additional tourists would depend on new flights from China, new Emirates flights from India, 10,000 additional seats on Air Mauritius for the Indian market and increased promotional campaigns.
In this vein, the Indian market has received an additional fund of Rs 20 million over and above its budget under the Economic Restructuring and Competitiveness Programme.
Also, according to the Bank of Mauritius, tourism receipts for 2011 would be around Rs 42,500 million (+7.7 per cent) compared to Rs 39.456 million in 2010.
The report indicated that at the end of December, 2010, there were 115 registered hotels, of which 112 were in operation and three were undergoing renovation work.
The total room capacity for those registered hotels in operation was 12,075 with 24,698 bed places.
For the year 2010, the room occupancy rate for all hotels in operation averaged 65 per cent compared to 61 per cent in 2009 while the bed occupancy rate was 57 per cent against 54 per cent for 2009.
Also, the number of nights spent by tourists in the country in 2010 is estimated at 9.5 million, representing an increase of 9.9 per cent over the preceding year.
The average nights spent per tourist in 2010 was estimated to be around 9.7 nights.
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