for cyclone repair

Fiji resort did close for cyclone repair

In the November issue of your magazine you had an article headed “Does a Vital Industry Need a Shake-up?”. Mr Geoff Smith of Geoff Smith Public Relations Pty Ltd, a firm re tained by our company, for warded the said article to me, in particular that part of it on page 17, for my attention and follow up.

May I bring to your attention please, for clarification, one error, and one distorted view point in order to accentuate the said error. At the bottom of column two it was inferred that Castaway Island was one of the resorts that stayed open. This is totally incorrect as the island was closed for some weeks in order to try and clean up the debris. The picture in the top right-hand corner of the page is taken from off the resort boundary of the island and shot back towards the resort in order to accentuate what your copy had put correctly as “one of the piles of debris”.

When on an island, and in the process of a clean-up, you need to centralise the debris in a particular area, and I think that commonsense would say it would be at the extreme of your property and not in the middle of it! The debris in the fore ground of the picture was awaiting collection by barge services, as daily garbage pick up is also not another feature of

island living. In the caption, you also state “the resort did not close but it probably should have”.

I understand I can take this point considerably further, but I have no desire to. I would, however, greatly appreciate it if you would see fit to reflect your

error in the next publication.

M. T. Brook,

Managing Director.

Castaway Resorts (Fiji) Ltd Nadi, Fiji.

The author of the article in question, Dr Norman Douglas, replies: Further inquiry has revealed that the resort actually did close for a brief period. Its condition in late July, however, suggested that this may not have been long enough to effect compre hensive repairs and cleaning

up. The caption to the picture on page 17 might therefore be amended to read: “The resort should perhaps have remained closed longer.”

The picture of debris is hardly a “distorted” one, though it is a selected viewpoint as are so many shots of tourist resorts.

My aim was to show the prox imity of debris to resort facilities, I did not claim that the debris was in the middle of the resort, but that “two large piles of debris identified the limits of the beach ...” They did.