North West Fiji Hopes For A Million Dollar Hotel

Million Dollar Hotel

By a Special Correspondent

A big Canadian group has begun negotiations to erect a $1,700,000 hotel at Saweni Beach—a small crescent of sand, with some palms, midway between Nadi airport and Lautoka,

Fiji.

IT is asking the Fiji Government and the Northern Club Lautoka (which leases the area) to give it a quick go-ahead so that, if every thing else is in order, it can have the five-storey, 120-room hotel built by Easter of 1960.

Financial interests connected with a big Canadian transport group are

behind the scheme. They have not yet made a final decision on the project, even if Government approval is given, but there is hope that this is one Fiji hotel scheme that will come to something.

It has plenty of points to com mend it.

Saweni Beach is in easy reach of Nadi airport, and the hotel will mainly be directed at airline passengers, who arrive around the clock and thus want a 24-hour ser vice.

The hotel will offer it, and provide each room with its own bathroom and balcony.

There will be a lounge, 24-hour service restaurant, dining room, main bar, dancing and sunbathing terrace, 60 ft by 100 ft swimming pool, tennis court and other facil ities.

The swimming pool will have its own bar, coffee shop and showers. 18 Bures There will be another bar on the roof, with accommodation for pri vate parties and dancing. There will be a 120-car park fronting the main entrance, and five shops will also be built into the hotel.

Eighteen bures will be an addi tional part of the accommodation,

for use by longer staying transient passengers. The hotel will not cater for airline passengers only, how ever.

According to a report by Inter national Consultants Ltd. of Van couver, which in July sent out a team of worldly-wise, free-spending experts to look the site over for the principals and draw up the plans, the Saweni hotel will “preserve the originality of the Fijian scene and not attempt to duplicate too closely the Hawaiian type of tourist accom modation”.

The consulting too, lists a number of improvements which it would like to have made to the area, most of them, presumably, by the hotel builders.

Air Conditioning

These include reconstruction of the access road to the beach from Queen’s Road, insect control, de positing of sand in the bay to pre vent discolouration of the waters, provision of fresh water (requiring Government co-operation), air con ditioning “for when sea breezes fail”, and removal of a broken con crete hardstand and concrete slip way, a relict of war-time, when the beach was used by amphibious air craft.