PNG to learn from China: Minister

TOURISM, Arts and Culture Minister Emil Tammur says China will play an important role in making Papua New Guinea a major tourism hub in the Pacific.
Tammur made the remarks when farewelling 34 Tourism Promotion Authority (TPA) staff who would be travelling today to China to attend a tourism industry capacity building workshop.
He said China’s tourism industry was growing from both international and domestic tourists and PNG could learn from that to develop its own tourism potential.
“According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, over 150 million Chinese tourists went on holidays in 2018 with an annual increase of almost 14.7 per cent,” he said.
“It also estimated that they spent over US$277.3 billion (K942b) compared to US$10 billion (K34b) 18 years ago in the year 2000 which shows how the Chinese outbound tourist’s number has grown.”
Tammur said TPA staff who were travelling to China needed to learn as much as they could from the booming industry in China to “enhance skills in the sector and attract more Chinese tourist to PNG.”
He told The National the number of Chinese tourists visiting PNG was low compared to Australia and PNG needed to attract visitors from the China.
“At the moment the number of tourists that are coming from China is low, around 10 per cent. The highest number of tourists that visit PNG come from Australia with over 80 per cent while some come from Europe.
“Chinese tourists are more interested in going out and enjoying themselves. They have the money and they want to spend.
“Even though we have the natural beauty of the country to attract them, we need to overcome hurdles such as infrastructure and security.”
Tammur said the thing that attracted tourists was the cultural experience and PNG being one of the most culturally diverse places in the world provided opportunities to explore.
Chinese Embassy Commercial councilor Liu Lingling said PNG’s cultural diversity alone was a great selling point for tourism.
He said the workshop that the 32 participants from TPA would attend was specifically for PNG to allow the country to learn the characteristics of the Chinese tourism industry.