Business Briefs
pp. 115-116 · Read in the full issue
• There will be no cheap all-in clusive charter flights by Qantas from Australia to Fiji. Qantas hoped to start the flights in October, but abandoned the plan when Fiji travel agents did not back it. The Fiji Government also refused an applica tion by Qantas for exclusive rights for charters to Fiji for 12 months.
Fiji asked Qantas to include outer islands in the itinerary, but Qantas refused on economic grounds. Qantas proposed to take tourists to Fiji for a week, put them up in hotels and provide breakfast, as well as sight seeing for less than SA2OO. • Fiji and Chile have agreed on route rights for both countries to operate services between Nadi and Santiago. Lan-Chile, the Chile air line, will probably operate beyond Nadi, travelling east. Expected calls on the way to Nadi are Easter Island and Tahiti. Lan-Chile is equipped to launch a service almost immediately, but it may be some years before Air Pacific is in a position to fly a Nadi- Tahiti-Easter Island-Santiago service on its own account. • Ansett Airlines is offering a twice-weekly all cargo service to Port Moresby to give overnight deliveries from Australia. Electra aircraft will be used. The aircraft will leave Mel bourne at 10 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays, stop at Townsville and Cairns, and arrive at Port Moresby at 9.20 am the next day. The aircraft will have a capacity of 15 tons, twice a week. At present there is a 21-ton capacity on daily jet flights between Australia and Port Moresby. • The French airline UTA and Japan Airlines will jointly operate a Tokyo-Noumea link next year. • The Vila Consumers Society with a net surplus of $10,900 in the last financial year, is easily the biggest co-operative store in the New Hebrides. The annual meeting decided to distribute a bonus of 5c in the $ on each member’s turnover. More than $4,000 was set aside for future development, including a new per manent store. • Papua New Guinea will get enough coffee export stamps to enable it to export all available coffee in the current coffee year. At a meeting of the executive board of the Inter national Coffee Organisation in London, Australia asked for the stamps. The board also discussed the future of the ICA, which will expire on September 30, 1973. The present
agreement may be extended in a modified form.
O Pan American World Airways will build a 250-bed hotel in Fiji, start to build a resort hotel in the New Hebrides in July, and is “actively” looking for suitable sites in Western Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands.
These projects are part of a Pacific wide development programme by Intercontinental Hotel Corporation, a PAA subsidiary.
PAA’s rival, American Airlines, and Americana Hotels, have signed a 20-year management contract with the Pago Pago Intercontinental Hotel.
They are now negotiating a similar agreement for a new 200-room hotel on Denarau Island, in Nadi Bay, Fiji. The Pago Pago has 89 rooms at present and is being enlarged to 188 rooms. • Associated Mills Ltd, of Port Moresby, has been granted a pioneer certificate to set up a flour and stock feed milling industry in Papua New Guinea. The Minister for Trade and Industry, Mr J. Poe, said products from the mill would represent a big import replacement. Associated Mills planned an initial investment of 51.3 million in two mills, rising to 54.8 million by 1983. The enterprise would create 70 jobs for Papua New Guineans. • Nauru’s basic wage for men has been increased by $6 a week, bring ing the total to 530.75, an increase of 24.24 per cent. The rise was back dated to July 1 last year and the republic’s wages bill for the first pay-out after the increase was $135,000, the biggest pay-out since the wages review in 1962. • Time is running out for owners of watches sent for repair to Bums Philp’s store in Santo in the New Hebrides. The company has warned that if the watches are not claimed within one month, they’ll be sold to defray costs. The notice lists 40 watches, all deposited between 1969 and 1971. Some of the owners stand to lose two watches. • Newson Advertising and Market ing Ltd, of Fiji, recently won two first prizes and two second prizes in the brochure and poster competitions held at the 1973 Fiji tourism convention.
International airlines, government tourist agencies, hotels and travel agents from all parts of the South Pacific entered. The first prizes were for the best brochure, “Today’s Fiji” for the Fiji Visitors Bureau, and for the best poster, for the Tonga Visitors Bureau. The second prize brochure was for the Tonga Visitors Bureau and the second prize poster was for Air Pacific.