Another one bites the dust

Tourism

ONCE Vanuatu’s unavoid able tourist dealer, gov ernment-controlled Tour Vanuatu has closed.

A Supreme Court ordered Tour Vanuatu's winding up after receiving a petition from one of the company’s major creditors, the Vanuatu Development Bank

(Vdb).

The company, of which the Vanuatu Government holds 5 I per cent, effectively ceased operations and its offices in the

Vanuatu capital were closed. Tour Vanuatu owed VDB more than five million vatu (38,000 US dollars), Financial Services Commission legal officer Marie-Jeanne Nalo said.

But it also had other debts, including a heavy floating charge from the Vanuatu National Bank, sources said.

Sources within the tourism industry also mentioned local people hired for tourism-related performances had not been paid for a long time.

I “Basically, the company is insolvent.

We’ve done an investigation on the case.

Its liabilities far exceed its assets and it’s been trading at a loss for the past two years or so”, provisional liquidator’s agent Jonathan Law said.

The Government was called for help and a possible cash reinjection to refloat the ailing business. But there was no reply, with sources saying the winding up was seen here as probably the least dramatic way out. “All the staff have also received their termination letters and the directors have resigned”, he added.

Assets were later put for sale by tender and meetings held to allot priorities to creditors, including yet unpaid employees.

But the banks are likely to come first.

In mid-February, Tour Vanuatu asked its staff to work only half-days. But unlike other more Asian-dependent Pacific desti nations, the fall of Tour Vanuatu is not attributed here to the Asian crisis. “It looks like there’s been a lot of competition out there with the set ting up of new private tour operators and Tour Vanuatu has suffered from that.

That’s probably the bottom line”, Law said. “This winding up is probably the best news in years for Vanuatu’s tourism indus try. For years, we’ve heard so many horror tales from tourists who came here and did n’t get the service they expected and had paid for. And in tourism, we have a say ing: when a tourist is happy, back home, he tells one or two friends. If he’s unhappy, he tells everyone”, a source said.

Vanuatu suffered a temporary downturn last January after riots in the capital caused a state of emergency and short-term book ings were down by 50 per cent for February and the first half of March. The tourism industry is Vanuatu’s largest pri vate employer and provides about half of Vanuatu’s total foreign exchange earnings in the services branch, according to official statistics.

Ironically, two days before the riots started, Vanuatu hotels and international flag carrier Air Vanuatu had launched a joint TV and press campaign in Australia, which provides over half of Vanuatu’s some 45,000 yearly tourists. ■

As empty as a jar... tourists walk past the once operating Tour Vanuatu office