A small slice of South Pacific paradise, Samoa has reopened for travel industry familiarisations.
The Samoa Tourism Authority (STA) will recommence travel industry famils this year as it looks to boost tourism to pre-pandemic levels and position Samoa as a top holiday spot.
Hosted tours will give travel advisors and other industry professionals the opportunity to experience the islands’ wealth of attractions for themselves, and hopefully also enable agents to sell the country with confidence.
Among STA’s current roster of guests are Flight Centre, Entire Travel, Ignite Travel, Omniche Holidays and Island Escapes.
While tourism numbers are still down on pre-COVID levels – like virtually everywhere in the world – new data shows that visitation to the country is making good progress since the island nation reopened in August last year.
According to STA data, arrivals from August to December 2022 reached 47,000, which is more than half of the number of 2019 visitors.
New Zealand and Australia are Samoa’s largest international tourism source markets, accounting for 21,460 (46 per cent) and 12,234 arrivals (26 per cent) respectively.
“We’re excited to welcome international visitors back to Samoa and are confident we’ll continue to see those figures rise quickly over the next 12 months. According to our most recent reporting, we are tracking well against our projections in our recovery plan,” the Samoa Tourism Authority stated.
New tourism initiative
On 10 February 2023, the Minister for Natural Resources and Environment and Tourism, Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster, together with the STA, officially launched the Samoa Tourism Sector Plan 2022-2027.
The main aim of the plan is to rebrand ‘Beautiful Samoa’ and also attract 250,000 international visitors annually.
From March 2023, Virgin Australia will join Qantas in linking Australia and Samoa with non-stop flights. Fiji Airways also flies to the Samoan capital Apia from Nadi.
Samoa removed all COVID-19 travel restrictions for travellers arriving by air and sea from 22 September 2022.
