Rarotonga information for Visitors
About Rarotonga for VisitorsCanines can run in front of a car without warning. Stonefishes can be found around flat, muddy lagoons at certain seasons and can cause extreme pain when they enter. It' always a good idea to always put on boots and to mix your legs when immersing in flat waters to deter stonefish.
Jellyfish and flasks of water can also be seen from time to time. Mozzis are most energetic at twilight and daybreak, with the demoiselle fly on during the day.
Record number of visitors
The number of visitors to the Cook Islands reached an all-time high after receiving 161,362 visitors on its banks last year. That is an upturn of 10 percent compared to 2016 (146,473 visitors). There were 8666 of the visitors who arrived in 2017 in New Zealand.
Most of our visitors came from all over the Netherlands, with 61 percent of the visitors citing New Zealand as their place of residency. Last year, 98,919 kiwis were here, up from 92,782 in 2016. That is an rise of seven percent. The Australians were the second largest visitor group in the nation with 21,289 visitors - an up six percent on the 20,165 in 2016.
It accounted for 13 percent of visitors to the Cook Islands. Cook Islands's third biggest group of visitors came from the UK and Europe. The number of these rose by eight percent from 10,767 in 2016 to 11,610 last year.
The Europeans accounted for seven percent of all visitors to the Cook Islands last year. New Zealand recorded the strongest visitor numbers to the Cook Islands in 2017 - 6,137 more than in 2016. In 2017, the highest visitor numbers came from the USA with 35 percent, followed by the Scandinavian states with 13 percent and Japan and Great Britain/Ireland with 11 percent each.
In the past year too, there was a monthly attendance trend, with the exception of July, which had 61 fewer visitors than the 16,469 in July 2016. Recent December 2017 numbers showed a nine percent increase in attendance over the same date in 2016.
The number of people arriving in December last year totalled 14,301, up from 13,090 in December 2016. New Zealand recorded the largest rise in visitor numbers by destination for December 2017 with 745 more visitors than in December 2016, followed by Australia with 390 and Great Britain/Ireland with 56.
The highest percentage of visitors this months, however, was from the UK/Ireland with an up 27 percent, followed by Australia with 12 percent and New Zealand with 10 percent. Whilst the growing number of visitors is greeted by the tourist sector, there are doubts about the levels of infrastructures needed for this expansion.
Last month's official declaration acknowledged that the Cook Islands infrastructures are not up to scratch in terms of traffic. "According to a recent 2017/18 Economic and Fiscal Update published in the U.S., "If the number of tourists' arrival continues to increase as fast as before without improving facilities and housing capacities, potential threats could be higher cost to the travel sector, lower levels of customer and resident dissatisfaction".