Name change; $2bn industry by 2010

Elenoa Baselala
It is new. It is contemporary. And it is of the 21st century.

Such is the description and explanation for the change of name of South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO) which has as members the tourism organisations of countries including the Cooks, Fiji, Kiribati, New Caledonia, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomons, Tahiti (French Polynesia), Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and industry members from Australia, New Zealand, United States and Europe.

Widely known as SPTO, it will now be known as the south-pacific dot travel (south-pacific.travel).

The name change was announced to the media last month in Suva. It was at the same media announcement that the organisation announced its mission to achieve a “$2 billion industry by 2010”.

It is the aim of the organisation to propel the tourism industry to be earning US$2 billion annually by 2010.
Chief executive Tony Everitt, who’s been at the post for only four months, said he was surprised to find after his initial travels around the region that tourism was not a well understood sector.

“We believe we are the largest industry in the region, and certainly have the greatest sustainable growth potential.

south-pacific.travel which carried out an analysis on the value of tourism to the region in 2005 estimated the sector’s value at about US$1 billion in 2000 with a little under 1 million international visitors.

By 2004, the figure had grown to US$1.5 billion from about 1.2 million visitors.

“If we can maintain the same growth rate for the second half of the decade, we could be looking at a US$2 billion per annum industry by 2010,” Everitt said.

“If we can do that, then tourism could be the single biggest contributor to Pillar 1 of the Pacific Plan which is economic growth.

“It will take a lot of hard work, commitment, cooperation, and investment in marketing by both the public and private sectors to get there.

“This level of sustainable economic contribution is an exciting prospect, but it also raises questions about its contribution to employment growth and poverty alleviation.

“Assessing these will be an important next step, as will be identifying issues and barriers to achieving the target.”
Everitt, however, could not give a breakdown of the US$2 billion in terms of earnings by each country in the region.

Neither has the organisation received the latest arrival figures for each of its members.

However, for Fiji alone, the country is estimating to earn F$1 billion by next year.

This target was to have been achieved this year but has been pushed back because of the political crisis in the country.

Fiji leads the South Pacific region as a tourist destination with over half a million visitors and is expected to earn F$800 million from tourism this year.

Meanwhile, south-pacific.travel director Paul Hughes says the name change of the organisation is to draw attention to its rapidly developing portal.

“New media is the greatest thing that’s happened for economic growth in the region.

“We intend to milk it for all its worth.”

Hughes says more and more people are resorting to the internet to check out tourist destinations, thus the inclusion of dot travel.

“No one knows much about SPTO, but it would not be so with south-pacific.travel,” he says.

A total of 743,000 visited the south-pacific.travel website last year.