For the first time in its history, the tourism sector in Mauritius has greeted more than a million tourists in a year or 1,038,968 in 2014, a 4,6% growth as compared to 2013 when a total of 993,106 tourists visited the island.
According to official figures published on Sunday by Statistics Mauritius the European market continues to play an important part in the total number of tourist arrivals in the island with a total of 570,548 tourists or a 4,3% growth over the figures of 2013, representing a market share of 54.9% of total arrivals in 2014.
It said Mauritius remained the preferred destination of the French tourists with 243,665 arrivals while the number of British tourists reached 115,326, or 11.1% of the total number of tourists who visited the island in 2014.
On the African front, South Africa is the main supplier of tourists to Mauritius with 93,120 visitors, or a 1.2% decrease as compared to 2013, while La Réunion supplied a total of 141,665 tourists in 2014.
Statistics Mauritius indicated that Asia occupied an important part of the market with 158,361 arrivals, or a 19.5% growth, due mainly to the growth of 51.2% in the number of arrivals from China to attain 63,365 visitors and that of Indian tourists that reached 61,167, a growth of 6.8% as compared to 2013.
