The arrival of 400 tourists from Sydney, Australia, yesterday filled the Nadi International Airport with excitement.

Prior to landing the Fiji Airways first tourist flight took passengers on a special fly over of resorts in Nadi and the Coral Coast, where the beaches were lined with tourism teams offering a resounding series of Bula to welcome our visitors. This comes 20 months since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country.

With the wait for international tourists to grace our shores finally over hotel and air port worker were filled with tears of joy.

The first international Fiji Airways flight FJ914 arrived from Sydney, Australia at 11.25am bringing in 293 tourists, the second flight FJ910 also arrived from Sydney brought in 301 tourists while 95 passengers from Brisbane were scheduled to arrive at 7.35pm on FJ920.

Five flights arrive today

Two flights from Melbourne, two from Sydney and one from Los Angeles will arrive in Fiji today.

The first batch of tourists who arrived into the country at 11.25am yesterday were welcomed with a water salute, traditional performances from the staff of Plantation Island Resort and the Government delegation led by the Attorney-General and Minister for Economy, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

Fiji Airways managing director and chief executive officer, Andre Viljoen, said it was a very special day seeing tourists back in Fiji.

“We have been waiting for this day for the past 20 months, we have been working to be ready and we have been working since March last year to prepare for this moment and ensure our guests have the safest and most enjoyable travel experience possible,” Mr Viljoen said. “In all my 47 years in the airline industry, I have never seen such high level of collaboration that has made today (yesterday) possible.”

Health and Safety Measures

Mr Viljoen said extra measures were in place to ensure full protection of tourists.

“All our health and safety measures have been designed to take into account variance slightness that may come up,” he said.

“We have put in extra measures with effect from today. So before anyone boards they have to complete a declaration of where they have been in previous days so that we can be quite sure that they haven’t been in one of the high risk countries which we call the red-zone countries.

“Our Travel Ready programme at Fiji Airways has won international awards, we are giving our guests that are coming in today a lot of protection.”

In his address, Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said it was encouraging to see that people were getting back into jobs bringing on the real buzz of activity which meant that a lot of people were getting back into their livelihoods.

“For the overall economic perspective and not just about tourists coming into Fiji it means that individual lives have been affected in a very positive way, it has given them security, it has given them the source of livelihood, they have regained their livelihood and that is what we are very focused on as Government,” he said.

“I would like to remind everybody that the rest of the world is opening, we have to ensure that we are in the ball game.

“Being in the ball game means that we have to contribute to be a health-safe place, people feel confident to come to Fiji knowing that we follow all protocols, knowing that we have a very high rate of vaccination, we also need to be quite sensitive.”

Tourism Fiji chief executive officer, Brent Hill acknowledged the tourism industry celebrating the duavata spirit.

“We have seen the Care Fiji Commitment which has been an incredible program that has been put in place by Tourism Fiji which has been accredited world class by Aspen Medical,” he said.

“And we are really proud that those safety standards and those protocols are enabling the tourists to come into the country safely form today.”

Acting chief executive officer of Fiji Airports, Isei Tudreu said the organization was excited and thrilled to be welcoming passengers back at the Nadi International Airport.

Feedback: nicolette.chambers@fijisun.com.fj