Mauritius tourism earnings up 10.8 pct in 9 months

PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - Mauritius tourism revenue rose 10.8 percent year-on-year in the nine months to September driven by higher visitor numbers, official data showed on Friday. Tourism is a valuable source of foreign exchange for the Indian Ocean island, known for its luxury spas and beaches, but it has found long-haul visitors from Europe harder to attract since the global financial crisis and has stepped up efforts to woo Chinese tourists to make up the shortfall. Earnings rose to 32.23 billion Mauritius rupees ($1.02 billion) from 29.10 billion rupees in the same period last year, the Bank of Mauritius said in a statement. Tourist arrivals in the period January to September rose 4.5 percent to 725,623, on the back of an 8.2 percent growth in visitors from Europe and 23.3 percent from Asia, it said. Statistics Mauritius previously forecast arrivals for the whole of 2014 to increase by 3.5 percent to 1.03 million and revenue to rise by 9.6 percent to 44.5 billion rupees. (1 US dollar = 31.5000 Mauritius rupee)