The Permanent Secretary for Ministry of Culture and Tourism Andrew Nihopara, (centre) PATA CEO Mario Hardy and Regional Director Chris Flynn (far left) during the press conference last week

THE country’s tourism Ministry says it is ready to host international visitors despite challenges the country is going through.

The Permanent Secretary for Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Andrew Nihopara in a press conference last week explained Solomon Islands is standing by to horde the inflow of international visitors.

He confidently said they have forged a partnership with the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), a world recognised tourism platform.

From this partnership, it is envisaged that Solomon Islands will experience a huge influx of tourists.

With the country’s challenges in terms of accommodation, flights and leisure, Mr Nihopara said strategies and plans are in process but the issue they are seriously looking into now is right investors and right numbers to control them.

“It’s going to take time for us to work on these issues, making sure we get the right partners and investors before we put money—we need to have good strategy that set our approaches,” PS Nihopara said.

“The ultimately key objectives are to take the right number, right quality of tourists into the country, and we need to address issues in our country as well.”

In the mean time, PS Nihopara said country has been experiencing people coming in, and Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau is pursuing its marketing which already places the country on the competitive market world.

“We will be having number of visitors coming in but with that number we want to attract leisure to those come on holidays and those genuine ones interests on what we have,” PS Nihopara said.

The Regional Director for PATA, Chris Flynn said improving the problem with having less accommodation and leisure will take time to improve but the idea to develop the tourism sector is crucial.

“We want the investors to see the potential here, so this approaches take time and I encourages you by saying it’s not an instant coffee this will take sometimes to get us through the plan,” Mr Flynn said.

“We have 25 year experiences and I know much about this, and we made commitment to work closely with Solomon Islands ensuring things start moving forward,” Mr Flynn said.