It’s great that we are already talking about billions of dollars in tourism! It’s the way to go! Tourism Fiji CEO Brent Hill reckons tourism in Fiji is a $1billion opportunity over the next four years. Now that’s quite a large figure we are talking about! Add to that the commitment to pave the way for us to eventually welcome 1.1 million visitors to Fiji by the end of 2027! Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Hotel Industry Conference and Exhibition (AHICE) Investment in Tourism Summit in Nadi last week, Mr Hill said we’ve got four years to basically sort ourselves out.
“So, we believe that by the end of 2027, we can have essentially 1.1 million visitors coming to Fiji. And our visitor economy level grown by a billion from $3.
3b to $4.3b,” he said. Sure we can talk about such big figures! Sure, we can forecast positive growth! The hard work though must start happening now! Any rise in figures must be accompanied by appropriate growth across many platforms.
That means embracing the need for seats on aircraft. That will mean consideration of flights and destinations. It will mean an arrival concourse that is able to handle a great surge in visitor arrivals.
And subsequently that will mean beds to cater for any rise in numbers. So it is encouraging to note there are 10 projects under construction right now. “The Minister of Tourism has been on record saying we need 5000 rooms, and that’s really important for us to continue to grow so that we have new stories to tell,”.
