Tourism: Kiwis Coming In February
Mr Hill said by mid-December, tourists flying through Singapore would arrive in the country.
Friday 03 December 2021 | 09:51
Fiji Airports Limited Manager Airport Landside Operations and Customer Services Joe Gray helps escort the country’s first of many foreign tourists from Sydney, Australia, who arrived at the Nadi International Airports on December 1, 2021, after almost two years of border closure. Photo: Leon Lord
New Zealand nationals will start arriving into the country by February next year.
This is anticipation projected by stakeholders after Fiji opened its international borders to tourists from Australia and the United States of America (USA) over the past two days.
Tourism Fiji chief executive officer, Brent Hill, said apart from Australia, Fiji was receiving tourists from the USA respectfully from Los Angeles and San Francisco including those traveling from Europe through to the USA.
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Mr Hill said by mid-December, tourists flying through Singapore would arrive in the country.
“Very soon when Singapore opens in the middle of December, we will start seeing Europeans coming through on that Singapore route and that is really exciting,” he said.
“Then probably we will get through to February and that is when we can get New Zealanders to come.”
He said apart from the 75,000 international tourists who were booked into the various resorts for December and January, more were anticipated to arrive in Fiji.
“About 75,000 tourists are expected to come through for the first two months. That is the only data that we know so far but in terms of total bookings, Fiji Airways is on record as saying they have had more than 200,000 bookings coming in.
“The good thing is I think it is about 60 per cent of the numbers that we had in 2019 and when you think about it, we don’t have the numbers from Australia, we don’t have all the States in Australia and New Zealand, China was our fourth biggest market so it’s very strong.”
Expatriates
Mr Hill noted that Fiji could also anticipate the arrival of more international business people.
“The construction industry, those expatriates have been coming and going including military personnel. I think the construction ones are always going to be there, some of those military personnel might drop and then you might get more business people coming in,” he said.
“I think it is interesting that when we came here, the net number of people coming to Fiji compared to leaving were 95 per cent leaving Fiji.”
General Managers
With the great number of general managers handling their individual resorts around the country, Mr Hill said it was enlightening to know that most of the general managers, specifically in the Nadi area, were staying back in the country.
He said the only evident reason was the happy return of tourists to Fiji.
“Out of the general managers that I know of, I would say a lot of them have certainly stayed here in the Nadi area and I think it goes to show that when people get to Fiji, they love Fiji, they really want to stay.” Mr Hill said.
“The buzz around Fiji is really strong and we want to keep that going into 2022 and we want to see more tourists here, more businesses open and the really important thing is getting more staff into the hotels and getting those work opportunities, that is what we are all about and that in itself brings more development as well.”Edited by Naisa Koroi
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