Tourists returning

to Fiji

The tourists are returning to Fiji. A member of the Governor General’s Council of Advisers and a senior tourist official predict its hotels will recover pre-coup occupancy rates by September.

This is despite continuing un rest in the sugar industry, underlined by sporadic acts of sabotage, alleged burning of Indian-owned crops by indi genous Fijians and the Fijian Sugar Corporation’s decision to close its mills in July so that tempers can cool.

But Fijian tourist and airline officials have impressive figures to back up the claim that the lure of cheap package holidays is bringing back Australians, Fiji’s main source of tourists.

By July Ist, ten days after the new $299 Sydney-to-Fiji return fare was announced, the regio nal manager for the Fiji Visitors Bureau in Sydney, Bill Whiting, had 5000 bookings, virtually all Australian tourists. Air Pacific flights out of Sydney and Bris bane were fully booked for July and August and heavily booked for September. “We’re delight ed,” he said.

Hotels which had reported occupancy rates plummeting to ten per cent from a normal 70 per cent in June, were by July reporting at least 35 per cent occupancy. The Fijian Resort claimed 60 per cent occupancy, while Tabua Hotel, on the Coral Coast, specialising in budget holidays, had an aver age 79 per cent occupancy for July including two weeks fully booked.

Mr Mumtaz Ali, a member of the Governor General’s Coun cil of Advisers, and a Senator until the coup, has forecast that occupancy rates for tourist hotels will return to a normal of 70 per cent or more by September.

He said this before the Fijian currency was devalued by 17.5 per cent, a factor that can only enhance Fiji as a tourist destina

tion.

Mr Ali made his prediction during a wide-ranging interview with PIM when he was in Australia in June, leading a delegation of Fijian trade, air line and tourist officials on a mission to persuade Australians that the worst was over.

In late June the Department of Foreign Affairs rescinded its caution to Australian tourists against visiting Fiji.

In the first week of July, Qantas cabin crews lifted their ban on flying Australian tourists into Fiji, thus providing three more flights a week, and reliev ing the passenger log jam buil ding up on Air Pacific.

Mr Ali returned home satis fied that the Australian waterside workers’ ban on Fi jian trade, excluding foodstuffs, would be lifted. “There is a school of thought in Fiji that we should be exploring alternative sources of supply, ” he told PIM, “and that we should never again place ourselves in a posi tion where we could be held to ransom by the trade unions of one of our trading partners.

“I disagree with the view that we should diversify away from Australia. I have argued that we should stay with our known friends. ”

While Mr Ali exuded optim ism for tourism in Fiji, he was less sanguine on other matters.

Speaking to PIM after returning to Suva he described the de valuation and the recently ex tended powers of arrest and seizure vested in Fijian army officers as pre-emptive mea sures in anticipation of what might happen.

Devaluation reflected not a fall in the value of the Fijian currency, but fear that this might happen, he said. New emergency powers had likewise been invoked as a precaution.

The army was no more in evidence than before, but the fact that they had been gazetted was causing unease in rural

areas, and he deplored this.

He also felt that the sugar industry would be unable to meet some of its contractual commitments to overseas buyers this year, but he was confident the shortfall would be made up in 1988 without losing markets to other suppliers.

Mr Ali regretted that Dr Bavadra’s refusal to nominate four representatives to the proposed 16-member Commit tee for Constitutional Review was delaying the Governor General’s timetable to return Fiji to parliamentary govern ment a year from now.

Mr Ali said that the new constitution could be expected to entrench a provision that future governors-general be

drawn from the Great Council of Chiefs, and that indigenous Fijians enjoy a permanent majority in Parliament. He did not relish the prospect of partial disenfranchise of the Indian community, “but we have to face realities,” he shrugged.

He added that fear by indi genous Fijians of political domination by Indian Fijians had been a matter of public record at least since the 1977 elections.

He believed, he said, that the coup leader, Lt Colonel Rabu ka had hoped that by deposing the Coalition Government, the Governor General would install the Alliance Party opposition in power.

“But the conscience of the Fijian people would not allow that.

“I do not believe Colonel Rabuka would have acted as he did without the sanction of community leaders. But I do not see that any useful purpose would be served by trying to identify who they were.”

Chris Ashton.