Niue's plan to boost tourism and become sustainable
Niue is hoping to further boost tourist numbers now that its recently extended airport terminal has officially opened.
Transcript
Niue is hoping to further boost tourist numbers now that its recently extended airport terminal has officially opened.
In the past year or so the island has seen significant growth in its tourism industry with an 83 percent rise in tourist spending since the Matavai Hotel was upgraded.
But it wants to do better.
Indira Moala reports.
Like many parts of the Pacific, tourism is the primary driver of economic development on Niue. At the moment it gets about 7000 tourists each year and hopes to boost this to 10,000. The Premier Toke Talagi says his long term focus is economic sustainability.
TOKE TALAGI: Up until recently most of the money has been spent on infrastructure but there's been no real direction as to whether we should build a strong economy or not. And it's very clear now that in fact the tourism industry is one of the things that the New Zealand government and ourselves are very happy to continue to build.
Mr Talagi says part of this is stabilising the population.
TOKE TALAGI: Our task at the present moment is to use tourism to create opportunities so that people in New Zealand, or anywhere around the world that Niueans are living in, will consider Niue again as a place for them to come back and live in. We're hoping to continue to stabilize the population and build it over the next five, 10, 15 to 20 years. So therefore our ambition at the moment is to continue to work on providing opportunities for Niue through Tourism as the main driving force to ensure that they can look at Niue and return.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key visited Niue briefly last week and tourism development was among the topics discussed with officials and Niue Government leaders. He says New Zealand would contribute about 1 million US dollars towards boosting Niue's industry and also promised additional tourism aid of 850,000 a year for the next five years.
JOHN KEY: Over the course of the last five and a half years, the government at the request of the Premier has tried to re-orientate how we can build and grow the niuean economy and the really big focus for attention has been for tourism. We announced this morning we're putting a million dollars into furthering tourism opportunities here and development of new infrastructure. It would be my expectation that we'll continue to put significant amounts of support into further developing the tourism sector.
Francesca and James Voza are tourists who from England but currently live in Wanaka in New Zealand. They say they chose Niue for their holiday because not a lot of people knew about the place.
JAMES VOSA: Not many tourists come here, so we thought 'let's go and give it a go'.
FRANCESCA VOZA: We heard it's got really good diving and snorkelling and we both love to dive.
INDIRA MOALA: And why do you think not a lot of tourists come here?
JV: I don't think many people know about it to be honest because we talked about it with all our friends back home and no-one's even heard of it. So it's kind of cool.
FV: I guess even our travel agent didn't know anything about it. Our travel agents asked us to pick up stuff which we've done to give to her because she's got no idea.
JV: Yeah they're going to do a column about it in the local paper about it when we get back
FV: Becuase they've got no idea.
New Zealand's newly appointed ambassador to promote economic development in the Pacific, Shane Jones, says Mr Talagi was quite insistent that things could be done better.
SHANE JONES: If you're in the business of generating income, you need to be really focussed. We need to encourage the people to identify what they think are the barriers and then for me to work out and provide advice as to how we might overcome some of those barriers with them.
James Vosa says they have no complaints from their experience of the Rock of Polynesia, which he says deserves more promotion as a holiday location.
JAMES VOSA: We went straight down to the beach yesterday just here and we were just literally up to our knees and a dolphin came right next to us and that was amazing. Even if I don't see anything else, that's just made my trip.
Niue's premier Toke Talagi says recent evidence shows that small numbers are returning to Niue to re-settle permanently.
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