Maintaining what is shaping up to be Fiji tourism’s best ever year for international visitation, the destination has set a new four-year record for visitor arrivals for a month of July.

Figures released by Fiji’s Department of Information show the destination welcomed more than 66,500 visitors across the month, the result eclipsing the best ever July record set in 2006 – 59,645 - by more than 11 per cent.

The strong performance takes Fiji’s total visitor arrivals for the seven month period January to July to 339,056. This in itself represents a 19 per cent increase over the 283,560 total achieved in 2009.

Australian visitor figures once again topped the listings with close on 1000 Australians visiting every day throughout July to help chalk up another new Australian monthly record for the destination.

The 29,436 Australian total recorded for the month represented a 19 per cent increase on the 24,729 figure achieved for the same period in 2009.

New Zealand visitor intake again showed positive growth with a total of 13,949 Kiwis visiting across the month, that figure representing a 5.8 per cent growth over the 13,181 achieved for the same month in 2009.

The positive Australia and New Zealand results were reflected across all of Fiji’s main markets including the Americas.

US figures increased by five per cent while Canadian visitor arrivals showed positive growth for the first time this year with numbers increasing by five per cent.

Tourism Fiji CEO Josefa Tuamoto again pointed to the national tourist office and industry partners’ ongoing efforts to build Fiji’s profile in key emerging markets.

These, he said, were evidently paying off given visitor arrivals from China achieved a massive 149 per cent increase.

Taiwan business too grew by 45 per cent while visitor arrivals from India climbed by 15 per cent.

Traffic from the UK/Europe, he said, remained steady and stayed positive with a 0.7 per cent increase in traffic.

Mr Tuamoto said the destination was bracing itself for a very strong result from the region in August, the traditional holiday and travel month for much of the northern hemisphere.