Focus On The

Tourism

Travel

Industry

With the PAcific island states geographical isolation , scarce resources and low-skilled workers , tourism appears to be the only viable industry they can reap benefits from. The emphasis now is on marketing the islands as an attractive package. PI M's correspondent, Ed Rampell , unravels the pluses and the problems facing the region as it tries to make tourism work.

Pacific Area Travel Association’s 44th annual conference in Auckland, New Zealand, official ly declared “Visit South Pacific Year ’95”.

The spotlight shone on New Zealand, Fiji, Tahiti, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, the Solomons and even Norfolk Island. The conference was the fifth New Zealand had hosted but the first which highlighted the South Pacific.

All went well and the Pacific basked in the glory and long overdue attention.

Polynesian and Melanesian dance groups performed in and around Aotea Centre, booths displayed Oceanic decor, such as kava bowls and fishing nets and cuisine like Samoan palu sami. High quality videos were shown revealing the South Seas’ splendours. Pacific delegates includ ed high level tourism officials and several major speakers highlighted the region dur ing the conference proceedings.

The speakers list included Princess Salote of Tonga, who pointed out that it was “fitting that the PATA conference is in Auckland where there are more Pacific island people” than in any other city on Earth. Bullish on tourism. Her Royal Highness declared: “To tourism develop

ers and promoters, we entrust our gems into the next millennium.”

Like most Pacific delegates. New Zealand Prime Minister James Bolger stressed the travel industry’s economic importance. “For New Zealand, tourism is now big business and has moved into the top spot as our largest single foreign exchange receipts.” Keeping with PATA policy, Bolger asserted tourism should emphasise the environment and indige nous cultures and be “sustainable”.

Keynote speaker Dr Nicholas Negroponte, founder/director of MIT Media Lab, USA, brought PATA to the hi tech realm of cyberspace. The futuristic academic urged PATA and the distant, dis persed Pacific islands to get onto the Internet, so that net surfers could find their way to Oceanic destinations via info-hubs called “home pages”. Dr Negroponte boasted that “by the year 2000 all Americans will do travel planning on the Internet,” in effect becoming do-it-your self travel agents.

An afternoon was set aside for presenta tions on “Media and the Travel Industry; Is Technology Changing the Game?”

Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, the Tourism Minister of Western Samoa - where many

still live in thatched fales and cook in earthen umus - said: “Western Samoa will tack onto the Internet, the modem method to reach consumers.”

One morning concentrated on airlines, with a keynote speech on “International Transport - The Way Ahead,” an airline executive panel discussion that included Grant Lilly, Air New Zealand’s general manager for New Zealand and Australia, and a speech by Air New Zealand’s man aging director and CEO, James McCrea, on “Tourism Investment: An Airline

Perspective”.

Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the famous diver Jacques Cousteau, delivered

PATA’s grand finale, “Responsible

Tourism,” which was nothing less than a poetic, stirring call to arms to protect nature, proclaiming, “We are all the envi ronment”. He crowned his eco-creed with a breathtaking audio-visual glimpse of the underwater world.

In PATA’s logo - a global view of the Pacific Rim - most of the Pacific’s islands are missing but the 1995 conference and “Visit South Pacific Year ’95” has gone a long way towards putting the Pacific islands on PATA’s map. ■