NZ helping Vanuatu tourism get back on its feet

Transcript

New Zealand has increased its aid to Vanuatu in the wake of Cyclone Pam with an additional commitment of $US18 million dollars.

Some of the money is to restore confidence in an industry that forms 20 percent of the Vanuatu economy and $US11 million will go towards infrastructure redevelopment, which will be focused on the waterfront and cruise ship precinct in Port Vila.

A tourist industry spokesperson, Brian Death, spoke to Don Wiseman about the state of the sector and began by saying there is now a lot known about the importance of tourism and what it contributes.

BRIAN DEATH: It's a sector that all government ministers right from the prime minister down really acknowledge that we need to support the industry, for people coming back to Vanuatu. To be honest, apart from the fact that we have a couple of larger resorts, the Holiday Inn Resort and the Iririki Resort, probably closed until around Christmas time, most of the other hotels and resorts and all the activities and tour operators are up and running, so they are just now looking for some marketing support to encourage people to come back and spend their tourist dollar in Vanuatu.

DON WISEMAN: And that applies throughout the country? We're not just talking about Port Vila and Efate?

BD: No, definitely, from the north down, Santo was virtually unaffected by the cyclone and they've been sort of fully operational right through. And most of Efate, while there was some rural infrastructure and some resorts were quite badly damaged, 90 percent of the properties are back up and running. The rooms out of function equate to about 30 percent, but they're gradually coming back online. And further south in Tanna, the main resort down there, White Grass Ocean Resort, that's fully operational, and there's a couple of others that are rebuilding like the Evergreen Resort, that needs to be rebuilt, but clearly will be open for business soon. Really it's the case of getting the message out that we need the people here now to come and spend their money in Vanuatu, which helps with the economy and helps with the tourism operators.

DW: What are numbers like at the moment?

BD: They're down obviously. The room nights over the cyclone months, March, April, May, quite significantly down. A lot of that was primarily due to a couple of resorts being fully closed, and that represented about 300 odd rooms. So out of a potential say 1100 rooms on Efate, so that sort of made a huge difference to room nights that were actually recorded through those months. But there was also a lot of extra people in the country over those months which distorted out figures a little bit. Those people were here as part of the relief effort. But now it's converting back to the regular tourist dollar and the small resort that we run at Angelfish Cove Villas we're running at about 80 percent in July.

DW: So some additional assistance from New Zealand, and you're expecting, hoping for more from Australia and I guess you'll also still be looking for some sort of assistance from other donors as well?

BD: Yes obviously Australia and New Zealand are very important partners as far as the tourism sector is concerned. New Zealand has taken a lead role with tourism funding with their infrastructure programme announced a couple of years ago. And then now there's additional funding announced in the wake of the cyclone. So all of that combined with the fact that Australia has funded a marketing consultant to put a plan together which is being tabled and signed off by the tourism office, it's been accepted by government, the marketing consultant will be retained by the Australian aid efforts to implement the programme which is really good news for the industry, because Michael Meads is an expert in what he does and everyone is very supportive of the plan he has put together.