These are the official figures from Statistics Mauritius for the first quarter of January to March 2022. For this period, the country received about 200,000 more tourists than for the same period in 2021 but it should be highlighted that the borders were only open to certain destinations in 2021.
This total of 207,391 includes arrivals by air at 206,136 and by sea at 1,255. The figures are encouraging as compared to 2021 which was at 7,956; however, this represents less than half of the arrival’s figures of 2020, which were 421,732. Similarly, for departures, they were at 214,716 in this first quarter of 2022, in 2021, they were at 10,177 and in 2020, the departures were at 469,483.
We note that the total number of tourist arrivals, of which 50% were aged between 20 and 49 years old, rose from 2,772 to 158,818, of which by air from 2,648 to 158,008, and by road from 124 to 810. Our largest market remains France with 46,134 tourist arrivals, followed by the UK with 23,039, 15,791 from Germany, 15,298 from South Africa, 4,011 from Reunion, 3,305 from Switzerland, 3,140 from Italy and 2,432 from India.
As for the departures of Mauritian residents, we note that the increase from 3,567 to 30,502. The countries of transit and destination combined are the United Arab Emirates with 8,980 or 29.4%, France with 6,484 or 21.3%, the United Kingdom with 3,309 or 10.8%, South Africa with 2,643 or 8.7%, Reunion with 2,425 or 8.0% and India with 2,083 or 6.8%.
Mauritius is ahead of the Seychelles, which received 77,655 tourist arrivals in the first quarter of 2022. But Mauritius is outperformed by Sri Lanka, which received 285,334 arrivals and especially, the Maldives with 431,563.
