F$25m price tag for Beachcomber Island Resort

One of Fiji’s oldest island resorts is now on the market.

Beachcomber Island Resort in the Mamanuca islands in Western Viti Levu was chalked onto the “For Sale” list by Bayleys Real Estate this week with a price tag of F$25 million.

“From time to time exceptional real estate opportunities are presented to the international market place. This is a one-time opportunity,” Bayleys’ advertisement reads.

“There are more opportunities for further development such as integrated resort rooms, villas, apartments, and residential homes. Interest has also been shown in the possibility of adding marina facilities to enhance the new resorts and residential lifestyle.”

Beachcomber Island Resort is the latest addition to the list of resorts currently on the market in Fiji, a list that may well grow if Fiji’s tourism sector fails to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic any time soon. 

According to the Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association (FHTA), the struggle to stay in business will become more pronounced over the coming weeks or months if the current crippling impact of COVID-19 on Fiji’s tourism sector drags on. 

“Many properties such as Beachcomber, Pullman, The Pearl, Smugglers Cove, etc, were listed for sale before the onset of COVID-related restrictions in Fiji and subsequent dip in the tourism industry. Other properties will be fighting hard to buck that trend of pulling up pegs and selling and this is evident by the mass layoffs/redundancies that have been hitting the news headlines in recent months,” FHTA chief executive officer Fantasha Lockington told Islands Business.

“No business will want to close up shop for good, so properties have gone into saver mode – reducing expenditure and focusing on domestic guests.”

The big resorts may be better equipped with cash to hold on longer, but the hardest hit, said Lockington, will be the smaller properties.    

“Even if they release all their staff and minimise expenses, they still have substantial fixed payments to make and these don’t just disappear. Sure they have been given grace periods by the various financial institutions but that all comes to an end in the next few weeks. We are sure that some of the properties that closed their doors because of COVID-19, have closed their doors for good. In the next few months, we project that the economic downturn will finally reach Suva and will affect many other industries and sectors. Tourism brought in 46% of Fiji’s GDP income last year and it touches every person in Fiji, directly and indirectly. So the tourism downturn will hit the hardest in the next few months and Government has forecasted this, hence their historic National Budget,” said Lockington.

The extent of COVID-19’s impact upon Fiji’s tourism sector was recently quantified in a business survey conducted in May and released last week by the International Finance Corporation. 

The survey – of which 620 of the over 3,500 respondents were tourism specific businesses – found that 29% (or over 170 tourism specific businesses) expected to go bankrupt if things don’t change by November.

The meltdown also involved a huge sector-wide loss of income, resulting in most operators identifying the “lack of cash flow to cover operating expenses” as their topmost concern. 

“Things are not good, as you would expect. The industry cannot fully rely on domestic tourism due to the low revenue generation so they are struggling to even break-even, said Lockington.

“But FHTA is working together with Government and other tourism stakeholders to ensure that when the borders do reopen, Fiji is ready to compete with all the other tourism hotspots around the world.”

Beachcomber Island Resort owner Brendan Hannon was not available for comment when contacted by Islands Business.

The resort traces its roots back to the 1950s when it was founded by veteran local hotelier the late Dan Costello, who also started the equally well-known Beachcomber Cruises to complement the hotel business.

Costello, a descendant of the pioneering Costello family that came to Fiji in the early 1920s, was also a founding member of the Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association and remained a strong supporter of the development of Fiji’s tourism industry until his death in 2010.    

At around that time too, Beachcomber Island Resort, which had quickly become a popular spot for young travellers, was bought by Hannon, who now also owns and operates Anchorage Beach Resort in the Mamanucas and Funky Fish Resort in Malolo. 

Beachcomber Island Resort is about 30 minutes by sea from Port Denarau.   

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