Tourism Is Now Important In Fiji

What the Hunts and Others Have Done For It

IN the Bank of NSW Building in Suva, in a room bright with travel posters and large photo graphs of Fiji’s beauty spots and native curios, you’ll find the busiest young woman in Fiji. She drinks endless cups of tea, smokes endless cigarettes, holds a couple of conver sations with clients, directs her office staff, talks into the telephone, signs letters—all at the same time.

Her name is Iris Hunt.

Round about somewhere is hus band Harvey Hunt>-he does not seem to be doing so many things all at once, but together they make a pretty good team. They are “Hunt’s Travel Agency” and, as such, have brought a new sort of tourism to Fiji. Recently they became sole bqokmg agents for the new Fiji Airways, and this and their tourists and their other travel activities seem to keep them on the move -rom about 6 am until way into the light.

After sitting in their office for a vhile, and watching things happen rou probably will be moved to re nark that they will, in time, no loubt develop ulcers. To which hus band replies, “Oh, no—l’m not the ype. And wife—in the middle of nakmg a telephone air reservation or someone who wants to get to lome or New York or Karachi or omewhere: “Think nothing of it. ve had one. I feel fine.”

That’s the way to treat an ulcer, ctual or impending: slap back its ars and forget it!

HHERE always have been tourists L to Fiji, of course, and people to cater for them, but until the ist couple of years such tourism as unorganised; nor could it be yarded as a major industry, as it ireatens to become these days.

The organised tour and the •gamsed tourist is something new 1 that they now flow irough the Colony in a steady ream during the cool months of te year is due in no small measure the Hunt couple who took to emselves the job of looking after i

ong wants and babying them j

These tourists are mostly from I ,w Zealand, and their three weeks FIJI is a real highlight. They are 't the money- frittering type: thev I iow what they have paid for, and I ey are determined to get it.

To deal with them successfully I J agme that you need the patience I the wisdom of Solomon, sympathetic heart— and lashings I 5r^ rge « n s“ ma:iorish sense of dis- B Knnf? Ut> whatever the secret, i e Hunts seem to have it. They

drive with them, dine with them, listen to their woes and their en thusiasms, and send them on their way happy.

It is easy enough to hate tourists in the mass.

I often sat in the GPH on Tues day mornings and watched them straggle in like sheep from the early NZ plane. Elderly, mostly, and looking tired and unhappy in thick Southern clothes. Or, later, I would see them gazing out over the green

lawns to the sea and the reef and their first coconuts, and squeaking that it reminded them of Mission Bay—wherever that might be. And my reaction was that, if it were left • °4. me i J . woul . d Probably slip arsenic into their pineapple juice during their very first breakfast.

BUT these people, although not spectacular spenders, are bringing a thin but steady trickle of revenue to the Colony creating new work and new jobs. It is doubtful if many of these tourists would organise themselves a holiday in Fiji—they like then travel neatly packaged—and the Hunts, by making this one of their

ravel agency activities have cer linly helped this branch of tourism.

The tourist business in Fiji still i capable of tremendous expansion -but not with existing hotel famili es. Suva has always been spoken f as the bottleneck in this respect ut from recent observations I lould say that the hotels on the ther Side would be unable to cope ith a much larger flow of tourists lan they have had in the season ist ending.

The Phllp brothers are making 'eat strides with the conversion ' the old Bayly Hotel at Deumba )out 30 miles from Suva, on the ueen’s Road, It has already found ;Vour with visitors and residents Fiji, and by next cool season tould be able to take an increased unber of guests. It is being de nned, for tourists—not just as an her pub.

These Australians, newcomers to ■® Colony, are tackling the job th fresh minds and imagination, ley have, too, what every tropical sort hotel should have—and which hotel in Viti Levu has got—a od, sandy beach.

Dne can say, broadly, of all the tels m Fiji that you will get a rsonal welcome, food and service it is now unknown in Australia d New Zealand; but they have an designed primarily for local sds and not as tourist resorts. If one could wave a wand 1 whisk the very pleasant little vua Hotel away from its present ality, and plant it down on wem Beach, near Lautoka—well jre you really would have some lowever, my own personal nion is that there is in Fiji at isent only one hotel that comes to international standards of

tifort, appointments, service and

ation That is the Grand Paci ni Suva, sometimes referred to irreverent local residents as a ite elephant or a morgue. If t is so, then it is the most isant morgue I expect to inhabit.

ke it.-

J.T.