P.S. Old article —
The gem of the South Pacific, Fiji, hosted its 6th Fiji Tourism Expo over two interactive, exciting and riveting days comprising of a cornucopia of opening/closing ceremonies and business critical meetings that are at the nexus of its mission to bring together international buyers with local sellers to focus on delivering transformational and breakthrough tourism growth into Fiji. Tourism Fiji and Fiji Airways went beyond and above in putting together a cohesive set of events at Denarau Island and everyone commended it to be a huge success but also a crucial and significant tipping point for the next twelve months as we all cascade our strategic and tactical plans to amplify Fiji’s collective value proposition to the world.
It was important that my Group Head of IT & Infrastructure (Pritesh Chandra) and myself attended to not only delineate our strategic roadmap for Project TAPA but also to embrace the diversity of supply side providers that are passionate about their product and service offerings across the land, sea, air and tour product types on offer. With more routes on offer through the national carrier (Fiji Airways) across Asia, Australasia, USA/Canada and the world – everyone is excited to further ensconce Fiji’s tourism industry which currently contributes about 36% of National GDP into new frontiers and markets. I was personally impressed to see a variety of wholesalers, OTAs, tour operators and DMCs from India, Asia, Canada/USA, European countries such as Ukraine, New Zealand and Australia come prepared and ambitious to develop their relationships, refine their product mix and commit resources to the cause. There is huge opportunity and market potential to further encapsulate the facets of the tourism and non-tourism belt regions (Savusavu, Taveuni, Qamea, Northern Regions, Yasawas, Mamanucas, Lau Lomaiviti and Vanua Levu) into the global travel discovery phases. These regions harness the abyss of cultural paradigms that are truly unique and one that leads to a total embracement of happiness.
I always say that ‘travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer’ and this was truly appropriated through the bulanaires campaign that went out globally the same day Forbes publishes its billionaires index. The message here was very clear and it reminds everyone of valuing the elements of life that center on the notion of happiness. Travelling out to these regions in Fiji is going to remind you of that very concept as its omnipresent across the people and culture that signifies the nation.
How can every one of us ride this journey of promotion that is about to take off in Fiji?
For starters, it is important that wholesalers start focusing on non-tourism belt regions. Tourism Fiji asserted this very fact as there is so much out there which contrasts and also complements the mainland experiences on Denarau Island and the Coral Coast. There are many out there whom flog advertising of mainland but negate the non-tourism belt. Some larger hotel chains, whilst being truly conducive to accomodating and targeting a set demographic market (which is required offcourse); tend to have less effect on the broader economy due to income re-appropriation back to their holding company country. It will help significantly if local operators and other regions of Fiji were amplified in wholesale packages to drive awareness and develop a consumer demographic in its own right. We all know that its universally didactic that ‘if you don’t go you don’t know and if you don’t know you don’t go’! On the other hand, the OTAs need to start writing infographics, content hubs and videos about these regions and experiment with biasing them higher up on fiji search results. They are already making profits from their other markets and if they are committed to driving tourism into Fiji which is the mandate of the national tourism office (Tourism Fiji); they should start featuring more non-tourism belt resorts higher on generic Fiji Island destination searches for hotels. Getting the right message across is key, not being drawn into cliches which is something I have seen the OTAs do a lot of. They need to start getting interested in promoting Fiji (and broader South Pacific) not just trying to bring their international ideologies of slapping booking fees into the region which is counter productive and does not result in any economic multipliers across consumer, business and government sectors.
I am personally quite committed to ensuring that these regions are written about on our new content hub, developed into easy to digest infographics, curated into mashup videos that extol the natural beauty of these areas and commit to harnessing the powers of conversion rate optimisation to bring visitors into bookings that will emancipate every traveller who comes into Fiji. This is a commitment to excellence and one that will drive significant inbound tourism growth into Fiji. We, as destination specialist wholesalers have roots that originate in Fiji and its in our collective interest to give back to the region through delivering benefits to the triple bottom line being economic, environmental and social.
I cannot wait to bring Project TAPA live as a centre of excellence in South Pacific booking site for buiness to consumer markets and a tool for travel agents in creating logsitically correct iteneraries! Watch this space as its going up very very soon!
UPDATE AS AT 0820 GMT+12 #FIji Time – The site went LIVE long ago
https://www.hideawayholidays.com.au/travel-blog/