‘south-pacific.travel plans to raise awareness of tourism as an industry within the region and encourage its constituents to strive to deliver a better tourism experience in line with what modern tourists have come to expect.'


At a time when the outlook in most of the South Pacific islands region has been gloomy, news of a new initiative to give a boost to its most vital and labour intensive industry must be welcomed.

The region’s apex tourism body, the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO), has decided to give itself—and the way travel in the region is perceived—a makeover. For starters, it has renamed itself as south-pacific.travel (Read as South Pacific dot Travel).

The rationale is that more people are accessing travel related information over the Internet than ever before which ties in well with the increased number of services the organisation wants to deliver with its fast evolving website, that is believed to have had about three quarters of a million visitors last year.

Over the decades tourism has grown to be the lifeblood of the region’s economy and any effort to propel it in a bid to achieving consistent, sustainable growth is to be encouraged. 

south-pacific.travel plans to raise awareness of tourism as an industry within the region and encourage its constituents to strive to deliver a better tourism experience in line with what modern tourists have come to expect.

It is setting itself formidable targets that certainly seem achievable but a range of factors outside its control could have a bearing on them.

It would be good to see the organisation taking steps towards being more than just an information vending, pdf (portable document format) brochure delivering, news letter pushing mechanism for the islands’ tourism industry.

It has outlined plans to forge joint public-private initiatives to market the region more effectively. Its new CEO has proposed the idea of a collective Brand South Pacific identity, which is indeed an idea whose time has come. In other parts of the world, notably in South East Asia, the idea of banding for branding has proven to be extremely successful.

As well as projecting a more holistic tourist experience, a common branding would give a whole new perception to the idea of holidaying in the South Pacific Islands. Such a move would be the biggest collective initiative ever in the history of tourism in the Pacific Islands. Just how this would be achieved will depend on the management’s leadership ingenuity.

But delivering a collective “South Pacific” experience, as things stand today, is easier said than done. For the region’s geography being what it is, it has been plagued by circuitous, inconvenient and time consuming inter-island air connectivity—in cases where the islands are at all connected with air links, that is.

And it is not just the geography that is to blame. Islands governments themselves have not been able to see eye to eye on a number of matters relating to cooperation in the tourism industry. There have been long delays in signing agreements like the PIASA (Pacific Islands Air Services Agreement). 

Some of south-pacific.travel’s biggest challenges will lie in getting its constituents throughout the region—governments and their agencies included—to cooperate and collectively deliver on the grand vision that it is developing for them. south-pacific.travel has its work cut out for it. To begin with, it will have to address the larger issues that have dogged the region’s industry, defying practical solutions for decades, undermining the true tourist potential of the region. While having a strong, functional web presence is a proactive response to the new high technology expectations of the travel and tourism industry, the organisation will have to concentrate its efforts on getting its constituents to rise up to the standards that the larger industry and the global tourist has come to demand of a holiday experience today.

Tourism experts from around the world have often commented that the tourism experience the South Pacific region offers needs to be scaled up to be perceived as a better value for money proposition. The holiday experience in the South Seas amounts to little more than the sun, sand, sea and surf routine. Activities are perceived to be restricted to locations within and around resorts.

Diversions like shopping malls, food courts, night life, cultural showcasing and wide ranging cuisines are conspicuous by their absence in the South Pacific island tourist’s itinerary today.

These are elements in modern tourism that propel repeat visits and fight the “you’ve seen one and you’ve seen them all” perception that the islands currently suffer from. Moreover, a varied platter also helps attract a far wider range of tourist categories. Not to mention the additional dollars it will add to individual entrepreneurs’ businesses thereby greatly expanding the employment market.

The Pacific islanders’ legendary friendliness and hospitality notwithstanding, the region’s tourism sector has a long way to go in adopting the increasingly exacting services standards that are being set by the tourism industry in other comparable markets. Investments in training, technology and infrastructure are clearly not commensurate with the tariffs most top of the line hospitality players demand. This skews the value for money equation and reinforces the perception that most establishments are too pricey for what they offer. That is something the apex body might want to address through its offices.   

But its biggest challenge would undoubtedly be the one that is completely outside of its control. As it readies itself to deliver on its plans that it hopes will earn the region US$2 billion a year in three years time, it can do little to ensure the region remains politically stable.

And if last year’s events in the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Fiji are anything to go by, the very idea of a unified Brand South Pacific may actually turn counterproductive—painting, as it will, other destinations unaffected by strife by the same brush: something those strife-free nations would obviously prefer not have.