Fiji dears the ring for the fight
pp. 59-60 · Read in the full issue
fight for the tourists' dollar
From SEONA MARTIN in Suva
The Golden Era of Fiji tourism, with its ever-swelling number of visitors and easy profits, is over and it’s a fight for every mega-buck.
But the usual air of optimism pre vailed at this year’s Fiji Tourism Convention at the Fijian hotel, Yanuca, on Viti Levu’s Coral Coast.
Perhaps with more reason than for the last couple of years, when delegates winced over drastically declining tourist figures and gloom ed about world recession.
This year they had plans for a strong national promotion campaign by the Fiji Visitors Bureau and in dications of government money to pay for it to cheer them, some home truths from the three-minister Fiji Tourism Commission and strong meat from Air Pacific to chew over.
Yet all was not rosy, as FVB general manager, Paddy Doyle, said in his opening talk.
While world and Pacific tourism figures continued to increase, Fiji was still losing its market share de spite a slight rise in actual visitor numbers last year.
He still claimed, however, that tourism was Fiji’s best bet as the main financial bridge between the present economic situation and future bonanzas expected from fledgling industries such as pine wood and beef schemes.
Last year, tourists left behind $30.4 million to help counter the country’s annual trade deficit of $ll2 million, which includes $3B million-worth of food imports.
The industry employed about 3 000 people in hotels alone, plus an estimated further 6 000 who derive their livelihood from tourism.
Mr Doyle said the usual things about everybody in the industry playing their part to improve the situation, and aimed a couple of pot shots at poor hotel housekeeping and fast-buck merchants in the taxi industry and among duty-free dealers.
To play its part, the FVB is look ing tor $450 000 running costs for next year and $7OO 000 for a na tional marketing plan.
The FVB budget has traditionally been made up of a government grant and a notoriously miserly voluntary contribution from the industry, usually from the same small group of businesses each year with indica tions of a growing suspicion that they might not be getting their money’s worth.
The Minister for Tourism, Mr Jonati Mavoa. has indicated his ministry budget submission will in clude the sum the FVB has asked for on which note he urged industry representatives at the convention to give a demonstration of their good intentions by supporting the FVB $5O 000 publicity campaign for the remainder of this year.
The campaign included a heavy Australian advertising component which was sold out within the day at the convention and contributions began tumbling in with $2 000 from the Society of Fiji Travel Agents and a similar sum from the Fiji Hotel Association.
Next year’s campaign, if it gets the money, will be aimed primarily at Australia and New Zealand, then towards North America, and on the home front at educating people “from the Prime Minister down” about the benefits and possible problems of tourism.
An outstanding feature of this convention was the presence of the Commission Mr Mavoa, the Minister for Finance, Mr Charles Stinson, and Minister for Urban Development, Housing and Social Welfare, Mr Mohammed Ramzan all of whom had pertinent points to put and some interesting infor mation to air.
They took a worthwhile and ac tive part in convention sessions with only rare absences because of press ing engagements on the golf course.
For instance, Mr Stinson gave the reasoning behind a strongly criticised, terse two-sentence reply from government refusing a request from the 1976 Convention for the 10% fiscal tax on imported “duty free” items to be lifted.
After his explanation, the conven
tion passed a resolution (one of the few and, like the others, one which has some possibility of effect or ac tion) that the government should consider lifting the fiscal tax on “certain” duty-free items.
Guest speaker. Dr Thomas Hale Hamilton, chairman of the Hawaiian Tourism Advisory Coun cil, who visited Fiji on a study mis sion recently, says the country has all the ingredients of a tourist de stination area which could attract more visitors than it does.
Whether Fiji wanted more visi tors or not was a decision for its own people, he said, and had to take into account the attitude of the govern ment which, until now at any rate, had been ambivalent.
Time and the October Budget will tell what the government, whichever it may be after August-September’s elections, wants to do about one of its biggest money-spinners. • The Tongan Government has made a grant of $4 000 to the East- West Center at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. Nearly 200 Tongans have attended the courses held by the East-West Center as part of its work for the people of the Pacific and Asia.