Diving and birdwatching popular

Elenoa Baselala
It was not until the last four years that Papua New Guinea began to appreciate tourism as a worthy revenue earner for the country.

This, according to PNG Tourism marketing manager Colin Taimbari, could be because the country has such a vast natural resource base that the industry was always put on the backburner.

But the government is taking steps to bring tourism to the forefront of national development. Recognising the industry as an economic sector partner, government increased the tourism 2007 budget by nearly five times from K3.2 million to K14 million.

The PNG government has also introduced taxation incentives in the last two years to encourage more marketing and promotional activities overseas by tour operators.

Also introduced are incentives to lure more investment into the country, especially in the hotelier sector.

“Of course a lot more needs to be done by the government and as the National Tourism Organisation (NTO), we are working closely with government to identify areas we can improve on to increase the volume of visitors to PNG.

“PNG has done well in terms of international visitor arrivals in the past four years where we have consistently recorded positive increases.

“In line with the PNG Tourism Promotion Authority’s Corporate Vision 2004-2009, we have recorded between 11-15 percent increases in the past few years as envisaged in our corporate vision.

“In 2006, we recorded an increased of 12 percent (77,486) compared to 69,251 in 2005.

“The exciting thing about this is that the holiday segment keeps increasing with 26.5 percent being genuine holidaymakers while business visitors accounted for a 9.3 percent increase over the previous year.

“In the past, business visitors dominated visitor arrivals accounting for 50 percent of the market share. But that is now slowly levelling off with our holiday segment,” Taimbari says.

NICHE BUSINESS

As in most South Pacific destinations, Australians continue to dominate the PNG tourism arrivals.

But arrivals are now picking up from the United States and Europe who are coming in particularly for PNG’s niche products in culture, diving and bird watching.

“Our estimation is that tourism contributes around K500 million to the PNG economy at present and that is likely to increase over the coming years. Diving remains a major attraction for PNG and that has been proven on the world stage where we have been ranked highly as one of the best dive spots in the world.

“Trekking, particularly the war-time Kokoda Trail is fast becoming a mecca for pilgrims particularly from Australia.

“Culture remains a major attraction particularly at cultural shows such as the Mt Hagen and Goroka Shows.

“Bird watching is fast becoming popular given that we boast some of the world’s most unique bird species including the Birds of Paradise.

“You can also go deep-sea fishing or try our many river tributaries for barramundi and black bass—the toughest river fish—only found in PNG,” Taimbari says.

CHALLENGES

There are still a lot of challenges for PNG to be recognised as a serious tourism destination in the region.

One is that the country is still considered a high cost destination and this is something PNG Tourism and Air Niugini are trying to improve.

There are also issues such as security, which PNG Tourism does not deny, but believe they are being over-exaggerated by overseas media.

“But the national tourism office is working tirelessly with the support of the industry partners to ensure we minimise some of these so-called impediments to tourism growth.

“This also involves a lot of awareness and workshops on our part to educate ordinary Papua New Guineans about the importance of tourism and how it can benefit them,” says Taimbari.

Meanwhile, in the last 12 months the national tourism office completed a few major projects, which included an overall tourism sector review and the drawing up of its first ever National Tourism Master Plan and a National Tourism Policy.

Taimbari says there has been a lot of interest from donor agencies to fund tourism developments in PNG which is a result of the NTO setting out clear objectives and vision for the future of tourism.

In fact, the master plan was produced with funding support from the Commonwealth Secretariat.

NZAID has also come onboard funding an SME training workshop for Papua New Guineans wanting to go into the tourism business and interest there has been enormous, says Taimbari.

“On the marketing front, we are now getting the industry more involved by taking them on tourism roadshows and workshops overseas so wholesalers can meet and deal directly with service providers or product owners on the ground.

“We have done workshops in Australia which have proven successful and our road shows are currently in Europe and will end in Berlin. Cruise tourism is also gaining popularity here especially with small to medium luxury cruise vessels from Australia visiting our remote islands communities,” he adds.