THERE are lucrative opportunities for the Pacific if it can sell itself as a single destination to attract the long-haul tourism market.
This was the message from Attorney-General and Minister for Economy Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum to participants at the conference of Association of the Development Financing Institutions in the Pacific in Nadi last week.
“We have to be able to spread our risk,” he said.
“For example, 67 per cent of Fiji’s total arrivals come from Australia and New Zealand.
“Can you imagine if the economies of Australia and New Zealand don’t do well, what kind of an impact it will have on us.
“But to be able to say to a German or Swedish person — why don’t you come to the Pacific, we can let you go and watch whales in Va’vau in Tonga, you can then go and do something in Samoa, game-fishing in Tuvalu, spend three days in Fiji and fly out — now that is attractive.”
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said issues lay within tourism agencies in Pacific Island countries.
“If you speak to individual tourism commissions or boards, they are all narrow-minded and only talk about their own countries and marketing only their own countries.
“So we need to have a collective approach and an expanded view of how we can tackle many of these issues.”
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said he hoped for further discussion on collaboration at a meeting of PICs finance ministers which would be held soon.
“I very strongly believe that a wonderful opportunity lies if we are able to talk a lot more collectively and have a lot more of a collective approach in respect of what we can do in the Pacific,” Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said.
Lucrative opportunities
Felix Chaudhary
Fiji Times: Thursday, December 01, 2016
