SUVA, Fiji (9 Mar 2007) -- The tourism industry needs another $9 million for marketing to help it bounce back to normal, says the Fiji Visitors Bureau. The FVB and Tourism Action group were given $10 million for marketing in the revised Budget but the industry had hoped for $15million for the bureau and $3.8m for TAG. As a result, tourism marketing campaigns had to be revised. Bureau Chief Executive, Viliame Gavoka, said the industry was facing grim times, with hotels reporting weak occupancy rates for April and May. Fiji Islands Hotels and Tourism Association president Dixon Seeto confirmed this, saying hotels would normally have a 50 to 60 per cent occupancy rate at this time of year. Mr Seeto said most hotels were now reporting an average 25 to 30 per cent occupancy. Mr Gavoka said television and print media campaigns launched as part of an industry recovery plan had failed, to some extent, to lure tourists. He said these were only effective as long as they were running. Once the campaigns ended, "so does the interest in Fiji". "We knew this was the case and structured our marketing activities accordingly,"he said. "But it needed a certain level of funding, which unfortunately, did not materialise,'' he said. "We continue to focus on recovering our numbers by June that is 50,000 visitors a month by then. "There's great value for Fiji out there, but again we need to tell people about it through TV and print media, which costs money,"he said. Last night Mr Gavoka could not confirm the number of visitor arrivals last month but said that in February last year about 35,000 tourists visited Fiji. During normal times the visitor arrivals increased in April as Easter approached. The Reserve Bank economic review for February said provisional visitor arrivals for 2006 totalled around 545,000, representing a 0.9 per cent decline on an annual basis. | | Fiji coup leader Frank Bainimarama This is 5.4 per cent lower than the initial visitor arrivals projection of 576,000 by the FVB. Mr Gavoka said there were other markets with bigger budgets competing with Fiji. "Of course there are the likes of Thailand, Bali, Malaysia, Tahiti and the Cooks, with much bigger budgets than Fiji, competing with us in the key markets,"he said. Mr Gavoka earlier said the campaign to revive the economy's mainstay had been made much more difficult by a lower marketing budget allocated in the revised 2007 Budget. Mr Gavoka urged the Interim Government to re-look at the allocation, saying to do otherwise would mean despondency setting in and "that's bad for tourism". He said if the country did it right, tourism could bring in close to $888million this year. In his Budget address, Interim Finance Minister Mahendra Chaudhry said "we must engage our hotels and resorts in jointly funding the FVB marketing efforts". SOURCE - Fiji TimesSCUBA FORUMDISCUSS THIS TOPIC - Dive in and have your say at Scuba Forum |
