Papua New Guinea's tourism sector has been told it should focus on niche areas like adventure tourism to foster growth.
Papua New Guinea tourism: Jais Aben resort in Madang. Photo: RNZI / Johnny Blades
The country's tourism industry is tiny with just 60,000 holidaying visitors in the past year.
The PNG Tourism Promotion Authority, in conjunction with the International Finance Corporation, said new data shows PNG should leverage on the areas that make the country unique.
The corporation's Neal Donahue says PNG could emphasise activities like diving or bird watching.
"Now these are not the most common forms of tourism but they are types of tourism for which the people that want those experiences, they are willing to travel further distances and they are willing to pay a little bit of a premium to have the type of experience they want to have. So Papua New Guinea is actually quite well suited to develop those."
Neal Donahue said the IFC, an agency of the World Bank, was also working on collecting similar data to help Solomon Islands grow its visitor numbers.