FHTA, 4 November 2021 – Someone recently likened the layers of protection against COVID as slices of Swiss cheese stacked beside each other. Social distancing, personal hygiene, mask-wearing, contact tracing and vaccination are just some of the imperfect layers (Swiss cheese has holes) that do not provide full protection alone but when stacked together form an almost impenetrable wall guarding against the onslaught of COVID.
When you think of COVID Safe practices in that context, you can appreciate why there is a need to retain restrictive measures and heightened hygiene standards, despite our excellent local vaccination levels, as we welcome international visitors back.
Exciting times lie ahead for Fiji. If we get things right.
How do we get things right? Just like the Swiss cheese wall, we align our practices across the industry, across the private and public sector and between countries.
We have been working hard to ensure that all the necessary steps have been taken so that international visitors can be received in a safe and controlled manner.
There are still many queries coming in from our industry stakeholders both to our Secretariat and Tourism Fiji as the national tourism office, regarding aspects of the Reopening Framework that have proven tricky to comprehend or need a fuller explanation on how they will be applied.
To that end, we have sought to understand the many new health, immigration, airline and country requirements, and then break these down through training, procedural explanations or planning logistics around how they can take place as efficiently as possible.
Testing protocols and the logistical details of performing the test, reading and actioning the results as well as getting the tests to the nearest labs and then accessing the subsequent reports are being worked through. Once confirmed they will be shared widely so that all the connected travel and testing processes enable visitors to get the best experience that they are all ultimately here for.
People booking their flights to Fiji are coming for a tropical holiday, a break from work, catching up with friends and relatives or simply finally returning home.
Whatever the reason; it is our job to make their trip as safe and as seamless as possible.
Our industry colleagues at Tourism Fiji have a comprehensive FAQ section that you should refer to for clarity around general travel requirements. You can access this on https://fiji.travel./FAQ and it includes information on booking conditions, vaccination rates, travelling with children, selecting resorts, testing and returning home and other relevant information.
We continue to remind everyone in the industry that the stipulated requirements for reopening to international travel must be viewed as precautionary measures deemed necessary by the Ministry of Health & Medical Services, at this time, to keep our communities, staff and guests safer (necessary slices of Swiss cheese).
Our compliance and support of these measures as an industry ensure we remain committed to getting tourism back up again while keeping the people we are responsible for as safe as possible (like an impenetrable Swiss cheese wall).
All of our members and tourism stakeholders have been reminded that embedding layers of controls against pandemic disease into their businesses, such as safe air and masking when needed, will make it far more likely that your business will remain open, not be subject to disruptions, nor lose key staff or guests to illness.
This is because, despite vaccination levels, all controls are important to protect health as immunity to the vaccine wanes, and reduce transmission that can occur despite vaccination.
We hope the requirements reduce or get removed eventually. But for now, we must all work towards compliance.
Based on the number of enquiries we have received, there is confusion around who can come in and how between now and December. So here is the breakdown:
From now until 10th November, only returning vaccinated Fiji residents, citizens and work permit holders can come in (unless you have been approved as a visitor to come in via VIP or Blue Lanes) and should be coming in from a “green zone” partner country.
This category of inbound arrivals will be required to spend 7 days in a Fiji Managed Quarantine facility (FMQ) and several hotels offer this accommodation service that can be found on Fiji Airway’s website https://fijimanagedquarantine.com/
They cannot leave their rooms like any other managed quarantine and need negative RT-PCR tests confirmed to leave quarantine before moving into the community.
If coming in from a “red zone”, non-partner country or coming in as an unvaccinated passenger, the quarantine time is 14 days. This information is available on the Ministry of Tourism website https://www.mcttt.gov.fj/home/traveltofiji/international-travel/
From 11th November to 31st November, only vaccinated, returning citizens, residents and permit holders coming from green countries get 3 days in FMQs. To leave quarantine, a negative RT-PCR test is needed. Everyone else must stay 7 days with 2 tests required. (topvillasrealty.com)
Then for the official Fijian border reopening day of 1st December, all incoming visitors from green countries are allowed quarantine free entry and will only need to spend a minimum of 3 days in Care Fiji Commitment (CFC) certified hotels.
On the 3rd day (or 48 hours after arrival), a negative Rapid Antigen Test ensures they have free rein to travel anywhere they wish, although we will be advising international visitors against going into communities with recorded low vaccination rates.
During the 3 days, they can still move around any CFC certified or approved businesses, activities and outlets, travel to the North to spend the bulk of their holiday there, go on a day trip or go diving.
International visitors include those coming in for a holiday, coming for business, attending a conference or visiting friends and relatives. Everyone in this category will be required to provide a confirmation of paid accommodation at a CFC certified property and should be getting transported by CFC approved transportation (including taxies) to get a confirmed airline seat.
Why? Because the Ministry of Health needs to ensure that since your last 72hour RT-PCR test prior to arrival into Fiji, you did not get exposed and contracted COVID. The Ministry needs to reduce the risk of transmission further because even though you are already vaccinated, you could still pose a risk.
If a positive result comes back from the post-48-hour Rapid Antigen Test, a follow-up RT-PCR test will be required and hotels must have these procedures in place with access to test kits and confirmation of exactly where they can get PCR swabs done, the labs that will provide the results and what a confirmed positive or negative test looks like.
Hotel staff are getting ready to be trained to process the test results, monitor guests and escalate processes when required, while we work on getting a better understanding of which labs can process PCR test results, how we get the samples to them from across all of Fiji’s tourism networks, what their turnaround time for tests and confirmed results will be and how these will be communicated back to the guest.
Turnaround times are critical to the industry because we want to ensure our visitors can get back on their departing flights when they are supposed to.
Every international visitor leaving Fiji eventually will require proof of a negative test to be presented to the airline they will travel on, to be able to get back into their country. Depending on their country’s requirement (not Fiji’s), this test might be a Rapid Antigen Test (e.g. USA) or an RT-PCR test (e.g. Australia).
To add another layer of compliance complication, some countries have outlined specific test types (e.g. USA), want their own reporting forms (e.g. Japan) or want specific information provided on the negative reports (everybody else).
Suppliers of test kits, like the suppliers of hand sanitisers, have flourished almost overnight, however tourism operators should proceed with caution and not be blinded by cheap prices. There is a list of approved test kits and the importation of these require specific approvals too (Ministry of Health).
We will leave out the escalation processes for positive cases, the need for hotels to be prepared for guests to stay longer, the very critical need for travel insurance to cover for a longer stay than might have been envisaged and the logistics that still have to be worked out to get test samples from maritime islands to labs on the mainland.
Suffice to say that we are wading through these as a collective tourism group and trying to stay focused on getting our border reopening right.
It is clear, however, that we must continue to update and better articulate the very important messaging on what to expect over the next few months.
As Fiji’s national tourism office, Tourism Fiji is this country’s destination marketing agency that ensures any information about Fiji uses all of its communication channels available, to clarify and update what visitors need to know if considering a holiday to Fiji.
And they ARE doing this better than anyone else.
If there is confusion or conflicting information from some of the Government department messages, social media sites and mainstream media; simply check Tourism Fiji’s website for the clarity you will need.
FHTA’s focus is ensuring our tourism members and the industry’s suppliers that are also members, are consistently updated on these same communication efforts, provide clarity and training and ensure overall compliance.
If you are not our member (yet) and you are struggling to understand the changes; you have a lot to catch up on.
Communication is often considered the most important aspect of success.
Right now, as we wait on the brink of reopening after almost 2 years of being shut off from the world, we need the right communication and the collective presence of mind to get correct information from legitimate and expert sources to successfully reopen.
Now is not the time to be adding to the already complicated situation of reopening our fragile country into a new COVID safe world by being the mouse of misinformation weakening our Swiss cheese wall of COVID protection.
If we want to hear the most important word in tourism by the 1st of December, we need to ALL work on getting this border reopening right.
And we can’t wait to hear ‘BULA!!’ ringing out every day, across Fiji.
By: Fantasha Lockington – CEO, FHTA (Published in the Fiji Times on 4 November 2021)
