An expert on tourism says the Solomon Islands tourism sector hold a lot of promise for the economic development of the country.
Photo: Darryl Toepfer CC BY-SA 3.0
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The Asian Development Bank is calling on the Solomons government to foster tourism as the country's key export earner, logging, winds down.
The sector is tiny at the moment and the legacy of years of ethnic tension at the turn of the century has held it back, with about 23,000 tourists annually now.
But Auckland University of Technology's New Zealand Tourism Research Institute director, Simon Milne, said the sector had a big future.
"I think there is no question there is the potential and the opportunity to build a tourism industry and the fact that it has had a - obviously had a period of stagnation, is a negative thing on one front but also means that the Solomons can learn from some of the mistakes and errors that have perhaps been made elsewhere in the region, in terms of how they move forward in the industry."