Tourist arrivals in Mauritius went down slightly by 0.8% in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, with a total of 263,716 tourists coming in as against 265,838 in 2013.
The official statistics released on Friday by Statistics Mauritius said that the European market dropped by 4.3% at 151,861 tourists.
The biggest market for Mauritius, France, suffered a drop of 4% with 75,028 tourists arriving over the period January-March 2014 as against 78,120 for the same period last year.
The market of the United Kingdom dropped by 4.9% with 20,104 tourists as Germany, third European market, dropped by 2.1% with 16,209 arrivals.
At the Indian Ocean islands and the African continent, the official figures show a drop by 6.2% with 65,216 tourist arrivals.
The first regional market, The Reunion, dropped by 4.8% with 39,757 tourists and South Africa, the second market dropped by 10.7% with 17,634 tourists.
On the other hand, China showed a growth by 93.4%, rising from 9,323 to 18,034 tourists and India recorded slight drop of 0.2% with 13,380 tourists.
The Arab market dropped by 11.5% while that of Japan went down by 21.2%, Oceania (5.9%), Australia (8.8%), USA (39.8%).
