French Polynesia's tourism authority says a recent spate of high-profile visits is some of the best PR they could have wished for.
Former United States president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle recently spent time in Tahiti and its islands where they met up with Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Hanks.
That saw the territory's islands, beaches and azure lagoons splashed across magazines, websites and social media pages across the world.
A spokesperson for Tourism Tahiti, Robert Thompson, told, Jamie Tahana, that has brought a surge in interest, which French Polynesia is hoping to capitalise on.
French Polynesia's President Edouard Fritch and former US President Barack Obama
Photo: supplied French Polynesian presidency
Transcript
ROBERT THOMPSON: It's fantastic coverage for us really. It gives us the opportunity to speak to a lot more people than we normally would as a little island nation. But yeah, the coverage has been fantastic. We do tend to have quite a few celebrities visit, it's just that this one seemed to go a bit more viral, and gave us a bit more coverage.
JAMIE TAHANA: Do these kinds of things, where Oprah posts a tweet. Does that actually trigger interest in visiting there? Do you get an increase in inquiries from these kinds of things?
RT: Yeah, well we've definitely in the last couple of weeks fielded phone calls from the general public asking us to, you know, explain which resort is what in a photo that they might have seen on Twitter or Instagram. So yeah, it does increase the interest, for sure.
JT: Is there any way you're looking to capitalise on this?
RT: Of course. I mean we will often have situations like this where there is PR and market around people that are visiting and we'll just make sure they understand that it's accessible to them as well. One of the problems we have when we have such wealthy or famous people there is that it makes people believe that it might be unattainable for them, whereas there are a number of options, obviously, that might not be at the same price point as those particular properties, but there's one down the road that's just as nice.
JT: The past few years for Tahiti tourism, there's been a bit of a flat line. The French Polynesian government has sought to give it another boost and stuff. Is this helpful in that effort?
RT: Yes it is. We've had a number of situations like this over the last few years that has given us increases, and while overall we've been more or less on an increase over the last four or five years, and actually out of New Zealand the increase has actually been slightly ahead of the global average, I think off the top of my head we've seen around a four to five percent increase per year for the last few years. I mean, it all feeds in to that pipeline of interest for the destination.
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