Zanzibar is expecting an increased tourist influx of 141,000 people between July 2005 and June next year, local media reported Tuesday.

Ali Khalil Mirza, marketing and promotion director of the Zanzibar Tourism Commission, said that increased arrivals of tourists to visit Zanzibar are also expected to boost government earning from the tourism trade to more than 60 million US dollars in the new fiscal year.

The director said tourist arrivals for the 2004/2005 fiscal year ending on June 30 would be 100,000 people in all. Zanzibar earned 55 million dollars in the past fiscal year.

Zanzibar was voted the best island destination for tourists in Africa and the Middle East late last year by a United States-based travel magazine.

Quite some tourists from Europe and north America shifted to visit the Indian Ocean archipelago ensuing terror alerts in other parts of the world and after the tsunami had hit southeast Asia last year.

A quarter of the tourist arrivals last year was from Italy while tourists coming from Britain accounted for 15 percent.

Tourism has grown into a big economic pillar in Zanzibar, accounting for 21 percent of the Zanzibar gross domestic product whereas it took up 15 percent of the GDP in the previous fiscal year.

(Xinhua News Agency June 15, 2005)