Samoa is aiming to increase tourist arrivals by up to 50 percent over the next five years.
Launching the Samoa Tourism Development Plan, Deputy Prime Minister Misa Telefoni said the country was experiencing a tourism boom with arrivals dramatically up in the past two years.
In 2008, for example, there were nearly 125,000 tourism arrivals bringing in 109 million US dollars, up from 100,000 spending 74 million US dollars in 2007.
Mr Telefoni says occupancy rates, across the spectrum have risen dramatically and called for increased emphasis on tourism development investment, both local and overseas.
He also spoke of the need to increase frequency of flights, including the new service Apia/Honolulu return to be launched by Air Pacific in September.
Over the next five years, he said, the challenge for the industry was to increase visitor arrivals from 40 percent to 50 percent or from 170,000 to 190,000 while increasing visitor room nights to more than 1 million
The core markets for Samoa continue to be New Zealand, Australia and American Samoa, North America, the United Kingdom and Europe will remain secondary markets while China and Japan can be considered as emerging markets to capitalize on.
