The beautiful French island 9,800 miles away planning to cap tourists to one per local

It may be more difficult to visit the beautiful islands of French Polynesia in the years to come, as the region announced a new sustainable tourism plan in 2022. Under the Fāri’ira’a Manihini 2027 (FM27) five-year strategic mission, the government aims to set an annual cap of one foreign tourist per local resident. 

The Southern Pacific country is made up of over 100 islands including the popular destinations of Tahiti, Bora Bora, and Mo’orea. It is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole overseas country. 

The FM27 document acknowledged that tourism was an important source of employment and revenue for residents. According to Tahiti Tourisme, 12,152 direct jobs were created by tourism, representing 18.2 percent of all employment in French Polynesia in 2023. However it is hoped that the visitor cap and other changes will bring a more respectful kind of tourism. 

Under the plan, the government aims “to diversify the different kinds of visitors, make it possible to reconcile economic growth with the preservation of the environment, the quality of life of the populations and the appreciation of our heritage”. 

The stated end goal is to “transition to an inclusive and sustainable tourism model”. 

Tahiti alone welcomed 304,000 visitors, of which 261,813 were tourists. This was an increase of just under 20 percent from 2022. Broken down further, 43,815 of these were cruise passengers, up by over 1,000 from 2022, said Tahiti Tourisme. 

Speaking to The Guardian, the chair of Bora Bora’s tourism association, Rainui Besinau, said that when cruise ships with up to 3,000 passengers used to dock near the islands, tourists would flood the streets of the eight-square-mile island. 

“The hotels wanted to protect the quality of their service,” Besinau says. “So when the ships arrived, the hotels closed the doors to the people outside. They [didn’t] want to be invaded,” Besinau said. 

Under the new cap, local cruise lines with up to 700 passengers will take priority over international cruise ships and the cap will not exceed 300,000 visitors a year – equivalent to one tourist per local.

However, last year, Moetai Brotherson, who became the islands president in May, told local media that he aimed to welcome 600,000 tourists each year by 2033, a figure double the cap.

Bora Bora, however, told the Guardian that the island would keep its limits on cruise tourists in place, even if the rest of French Polynesia boosted its numbers. 

Dr Timothy MacNeill, director of sustainability studies at Ontario Tech University, said that cruise tourism was “very bad in basically every way”. 

“If you can think of an industry that’s a good candidate to be stopped altogether, it would probably be cruise tourism,” he said.