Pacific tourism operators to promote niche options

Transcript

Media coverage of Pacific disasters means there are fewer European buyers turning up at this year's South Pacific Tourism Exchange.

The SPTO CEO Ilisoni Vuidreketi says this year there will be more promotion of smaller and more remote destinations that offer niche options like diving.

However, he told Alex Perrottet Pacific countries need to work harder to market their products after events such as Cyclone Winston.

ILISONI VUIDREKETI: As far as the buyers are concerned what we've found is that there's not too much has changed much in regard to the traditional source markets of Australia and New Zealand, I suppose because they are very familiar with the region, but we do see slight changes to the long-haul markets, coming down to this area. There's a slight decrease in some of these countries and I suppose that is due to the limited information that is dished out to these long-haul markets. China has come up strongly for the Pacific region but we note that three of the European soft markets have shown a slight decline in the participation in this year's SPTE?

ALEX PERROTTET: And why is that, what are you putting that down to?

IV: I suppose it's the kind of news that goes out, when you look at television for example, the only news they put out are the news of natural disasters, so countries in the region need to strengthen and maintain a high level of promotional activities in the source markets, the dishing out of up-to-date information and also educational and promotional programmes, which we have been trying to do in the last few weeks and last few months, but that needs to be carried on more consistently.

AP: What's important particularly with getting people from the long-haul markets is air travel and we've seen Fiji Airways announce it's going to be flying more regularly from Singapore as well as San Francisco, bringing in the North Americans. That's going to help the country that already has the lion's share of the tourism market, and that's Fiji. Obviously it's a much longer-term scenario for some of the smaller countries. How important is the smaller air carriers taking tourists, once they are in the Pacific, to some of these more remote locations?

IV: It's very critical that we have good regional connectivity or air connectivity within the Pacific because we've seen Fiji Airways going out to these major source markets and also to the two new major source markets that you've just mentioned so the issue of increasing flight capacity within the Pacific is quite critical especially for the smaller island countries. Because what we found in the past is that they would come to Fiji and then slowly they'll be able to go to the other smaller Pacific island countries, after receiving educational programmes on the options there are in the other countries that they could travel to. So airline connections within the region is quite key.