But concerns remain over Pacific-wide labour shortages
Travellers now want authentic and immersive vacation experiences, an analyst from international consulting firm Twenty31, told the recent Fiji Tourism Expo.
Oliver Martin said travellers are looking for last minute and flexible travel options, want to stay longer at destinations, are increasingly influenced by social media and streaming content, and are still concerned about health and safety needs.
These shifts set the tone of many sessions at the expo, which was imbued with cautious optimism, given the strong opening Fiji’s industry has experienced in the first few months of this year.
Tourism Fiji CEO, Brent Hill, says they aim to attract one million visitors by 2024, and grow tourism’s contribution to FJD$3.37 billion by the end of that year. This April, the average daily room rate and revenue per available room matched 2019 pre-pandemic figures, and Tourism Fiji Chair and Fiji Airways CEO, Andre Viljoen, told delegates that bookings for the next six months were approaching pre-COVID levels. Visitors to Fiji are staying longer and spending more.
Twenty31’s Martin notes there are some risks; the war in Ukraine is impacting Europe outbound travel and is driving up inflation. “The biggest thing that is going to impact our industry now is the price of oil and gas,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you are an airline and you use jet fuel, if you’re a boat operator, if you are a hotel and you have to have generators, if you are an agriculture heavy industry and you rely on fertilisers, or you are an island like Fiji that has to import in a heck of a lot of things, it’s going to impact on the market.”
Brent Hill believes that despite risks, the 2024 projections are achievable.
“In the corporate plan, there’s six or seven possible headwinds, everything from climate change impact to the pandemic doing something crazy again, economic issues like supply chain issues that we’ve got now, and fuel prices and the rest of it. So, at the moment, it’s very fragile, I think that’s acknowledged…But I think we have to be optimistic about the future.”
His optimism stems from the fact that Fiji’s tourism recovery comes despite the country being open to just three markets: Australia, New Zealand and the U.S.
Historically the industry has been buffeted not only by natural disasters, but also political coups. With elections due before January 2023, Hill says political instability would be “catastrophic to tourism…we 100% need to put that behind us for the very sake of our economy.”
Don’t go to war on price
Another challenge will be the inevitable discounting that will occur once other tourism destinations open.
However Oliver Martin has cautioned against getting into a price war.
“You compete on price on the long term, it has a detrimental impact on your destination, and then you’ll start turning into the Phukets, the Pattayas, Waikiki Beach, the Goas, all of those discounted destinations of the world. And it becomes a zero-sum game. You’re continually chasing after the lower end of the market and will never recover your destination brand.
“Take a destination like Fiji where you have a broad range of hotel product and attractions, there is a range of price points. The key is eventually, you start moving higher up the value chain. You start attracting not exactly a luxury traveller, but a traveller that appreciates the value of what you have to offer in Fiji.”
Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association CEO, Fantasha Lockington said Fiji needs to be able to respond to the “rock bottom prices” that Bali and other destinations will start to offer, but not by getting into a price war.
She says, “Six months into the reopening, we can see that people are spending a little bit more, they’re staying a little bit longer. They don’t have a problem with traveling up further.
“They want to be able to go to the north, they want to go out to the coral coast and further out into the rural areas. The type of traveller that we’re enticing now, [it’s] individuals who want to be able to see what else is out there in the community.”
She continues, “Fiji has been able to capitalise on the fact that we have had a whole lot of travellers who’ve never been before. That’s an opportunity to capture them, and make sure that when they go back, we’ll still be front and centre in their minds when they tend to look [back] and say okay, I’m due for a holiday. And these include the people who used to go to Southeast Asia, who would make that once every so many years trip up to North America, or travel around Europe, but because of the way different countries were handling COVID, the confidence levels to travel just started to shift.”
Sustainability matters
Hill calls (environmental and cultural) sustainability in tourism a “hygiene factor”, something Fiji must do, and do with integrity.
“I think there is a risk that, as people start down the path of sustainability, they will face criticism, and they’ll think, well I don’t have the credibility in this space, so I’ll back off, and I think that’s wrong. The important thing is to come out and try and make small steps down that path.”
He says recycling, waste and renewables are all part of this picture and this needs to be addressed on a community scale, starting with capture of plastic for recycling.
Other Pacific Islands are also looking at making sustainability a key part of their industry and marketing efforts.
This month Tokelau became the seventh member to sign on to the Pacific Tourism Organisation’s (SPTO) Pacific Leaders Statement of Commitment to advancing sustainable tourism across the region by 2030, with Faafetai Taumanu, Tokelau’s Minister of Economic Development, Natural Resources and Environment, noting that Tokelau, like much of the Pacific’s smaller destinations, has unique and unspoilt offerings that are waiting to be discovered by travellers who wish to venture off the beaten track.
He says the commitment recognises the need to prioritise green investments to support tourism growth and work with partners to mobilise resources, and offer visitors “high quality, authentic, accessible and sustainable experiences that reflect our own country’s uniqueness.”
Meanwhile in the north Pacific, Palau is about to launch Ol’au Palau, which will see guests use an app to gather points for treating the island nation “gently and respectfully” by, for example, visiting culturally important sites, eating local food, and using reef-safe sunscreen. Those points will be redeemable for special experiences, such as attending important (but inaccessible to outsiders) cultural ceremonies or fishing in secluded spots.
Ol’au Palau builds on the Palau Pledge, a promise visitors make to protect Palau’s environment for its children. The pledge is stamped in passports and must be signed before an immigration agent on arrival. Pre-COVID, Palau was welcoming seven times the country’s population per annum, which was putting pressure on on its fragile marine and land ecosystems.
Labour pressures
The difficulty of attracting and keeping staff in the industry may hamper recovery efforts across the region.
“We are facing a loss of critical staff and institutional knowledge and job skills,” SPTO CEO, Chris Cocker recently told regional journalists.
Recent research conducted by academics at Massey University, “Measuring the Wellbeing of Tourism Reliant Communities in the South Pacific During the COVID-19 Pandemic”, found some ambivalence amongst former tourism workers from Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands and Vanuatu about returning to the industry.
The authors, Regina Scheyvens, Apisalome Movono and others found, “A wide range of positive and negative views about tourists were expressed, with some Pacific peoples struggling without tourists during the period of COVID-19. Some of those who were positive about the lack of tourists during the pandemic period expressed that this was necessary to protect the health of their people. Many also noted they were taking better care of themselves and their communities when they didn’t have to focus so much of their energy on tourists.
“‘It has been good for my wellbeing because I am learning how to live better,’” one male tourism worker told the authors.
There are a variety of reasons for labor shortages, including labour migration and work scheme programs to Australia.
“One of the concerns we have is that we’ve got very skilled staff going out from hospitality who are executive chefs or senior managers in their own right, they are moving off to do work overseas, but they’re not working in the areas of their expertise,” says Fantasha Lockington. “I know that the money is good, and that’s great, that money eventually comes back to Fiji. But their experience isn’t being enhanced in any way, because that person will come back at the same level that he went as. So, where does that leave our industry? We’re saying we want Fiji to be high value, how do we continue to do that high value if we don’t have enough skilled staff to be working within the industry?
“I just feel on a personal level that as Fiji, we’re making it so easy for people to simply leave but we’re forgetting that we’re supposed to be also helping the biggest industry get back off its knees and sustain the economy for a little bit longer, while everything else starts to come back,” says Lockington. “We feel like, hang on, we’re just standing up here, don’t kick us in the knees right now. The bigger hotels are losing quite a lot of their workers. And so, as the bigger hotels lose their workers, the smaller properties, including the smaller businesses, they’re losing theirs… to the bigger hotels.”
Hill agrees that labour shortages are of concern.
“If someone says, I want to be able to go up there and earn an Australian wage and send money back home, who am I to try and hold them back? But at the same time, skilled labour is really important here. So what we have to do is to make sure that our industry remunerates as best as it possibly can, and I know in a lot of cases, the resorts will pay well above award rates, which is really great, provide opportunities, provide exciting job roles, all those kinds of things so that people really incentivise to work and stay in Fiji. Trying to get the best talent at the moment is difficult, it’s a very competitive market.”
Senior Vice President at Warwick Hotels and Resorts, Tammie Tam, says the labour problem is even worse for them on the Coral Coast. “Some of the families have decided, ‘Oh, I have five family members, all five used to work in the hotel, I’m putting all the eggs in one basket and now I’ve learnt that I can’t do that.”
Vanuatu reopens its borders on 1 July, and a labour coalition has been formed between government departments and the Vanuatu Tourism Organisation to attract workers to the sector.
Meanwhile the President of Cook Islands Tourism Industry Council and GM Muri Beach Club, Liana Scott, says they have major staffing issues. “Because we had such a good relationship with New Zealand, we did lose a number of our local Cook Island staff to New Zealand. But more than that, and what some of the trend recently has been, is actually losing some of our migrant workers. And generally, when you have migrant workers work for you, you contract them for three years or up to six years. So having those losses has been quite tough on businesses.”
Scott says this means businesses are having to ensure they don’t compromise service, and are adapting by shortening opening hours, not taking walk-in customers or redesigning menus.
Cook Islands operators are also looking to Fiji and Tahiti for workers.
“It’s meant that the there’s been wage reviews, it means that supply and demand has naturally increased the rate of pay on the island. It means that instead of the employer…holding all the cards, it’s flipped a little bit and the employee suddenly has the power. So, I think perhaps there was a little bit of balance that was needing to happen. And that has certainly happened. But what we want to ensure……is that, you know, we’re paying for productivity,” Scott says.
Back in Fiji, FHTA this month signed an MOU with the National Union of Hospitality, Catering and Tourism Industries Employees (NUHCTIE) for a collective agreement template for hotel workers. FHTA Human resources chair and Tanoa Hotel Group GM, Narend Kumar, said: “As part of FHTA’s ongoing efforts of bargaining in good faith and maintaining amicable industrial relations, especially now with tourism moving very quickly from recovery mode to full operations; we want to maintain fair and equitable employment conditions industry-wide.”
In their study, Scheyvens and Movono made some specific suggestions for improving the sustainability of the tourism sector. These included increasing wages, providing more opportunities for upskilling workers, establishment of an insurance scheme or a reserves fund for tourism employees, so that financial support is on hand during times of crisis or hardship, increased unionisation of tourism workers, and stronger environmental protections to safeguard natural resources for future generations amongst others.
While respondents had differing views on their social, physical, financial, and spiritual wellbeing, overall, “the positive impacts on social wellbeing outweighed the negatives for many of the respondents. COVID gave them the chance to connect with others, reconnect with culture, and create long lasting bonds that the hustle and bustle of normal life would not have given them the time to do.”
“We have little, but we survive,” a former Samoan tourism worker said.
