Calls for a Fiji Tourism Forum

Transcript

There are calls for a Fiji Tourism Forum to be established to help make tourism a 1 billion US dollar industry by 2020.

The government has unveiled a plan to grow its current 678 million US dollar tourism sector, and create about 10,000 new jobs in the process.

Tourism Fiji's chairman, Stefan Pichler, says the industry is fragmented, and needs a common voice to reach that goal.

Mr Pichler says a forum would bring all together stakeholders including infrastructure providers, airlines and tour operators to share experiences, exchange views on the market and develop a long-term tourism development plan.

He spoke to Mary Baines.

STEFAN PICHLER: The tourism industry is very fragmented and needs a common voice, a common exchange of information. The first objective what we have to do in Fiji is to develop a long-term tourism development plan which stipulates our objectives in tourism until 2025, 2030. So we have to have a vision and a strategy. And then in order to implement and execute the strategy we need to call upon all the players in the industry to work together. Which means infrastructure providers, tour operators, airlines, incoming operators, etc, etc. We all have to sit together, we all have to work together, we have to coordinate, exchange information. So we don't have that right now but we need it in order to make a step forward in tourism.

MARY BAINES: I understand the target is to get to a 1 billion US dollar industry by 2020, how are you planning to do that?

SP: Well that's exactly the point. I think the politicians, the government has formulated a target of 1.93 million Fiji dollars in tourism spend in 2020 and now we need to operationalise this target, and see how do we get there. Which means we source markets to tap in, how do we, which market segments within the source markets do we tap in, what products do we need, and what products can we sell to these market segments, and how do we market these products, how do we penetrate these source markets in order to get the 1.93 billion Fijian dollars tourism spend. So in order to operationalise these targets, these ideas, we have to do that. Because no body can do it alone - the government can't do it alone, the airlines can't do it alone, tour operators can't do it alone.

MB: What is the tourism spend at the moment annually?

SP: The annual tourism spend right now is 1.32 billion Fiji dollars, and this is the number for 2012. Now after the elections I think that we have a sea full of opportunities that people will try to visit Fiji more and more often, so it's a golden opportunity. So that's why we have to get the right strategy and execute it in the right way.