RECESSION BUSTING IN THE COOK ISLANDS

Dev Nadkarni

Some weeks ago as gloom and doom reports of the unfolding global financial recession fill the news media across the world, a woman called Glenda Tuaine is busy helping a television crew film a few episodes of the series Shortland Street in Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.
At the end of a busy workday, one of the stressed-out crew suddenly happens to notice that no one is actually saying anything about the recession.
That gets Glenda’s creative juices flowing. In a stroke of sheer genius, this marketing manager of the Cook Islands Tourism Corporation comes up with the incredibly outrageous but refreshing idea of projecting her country of 11,000 residents as the world’s recession free zone. The line beckons people from all over the world to forget their woes and come and take a break in the little country’s breathtakingly beautiful islands and sample its enviably carefree island lifestyle.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Thanks to the infectiously viral social networking websites, the world’s wire agencies pick up this oasis of a news report in the depressing desert of news of fallen companies, lost jobs and wiped out net worth. The next day, no less a media outlet than the Wall Street journal picks it up, followed by all major media outlets across the world. Cook Islands is making world headlines.
Last month, Glenda told me in Rarotonga that the experts told her that the country received more than US$2.5 million worth of exposure because of her incredible headline in just a week—all for free. I don’t think any South Pacific destination has managed to net so much publicity at no cost whatsoever in so little time. It is indeed a stroke of marketing genius. It’s too early to say if the steadily increasing tourist numbers over the past few months will see a spurt as a result of the campaign.
Prime Minister Jim Marurai says he is rather inclined to believe the recent spurt has to do more with travel advisories in Australia and New Zealand warning tourists about travel to hitherto destinations like Fiji.
Deputy Prime Minister Terepai Maoate is glad the gamble seems to be working as everyone is at least talking about it. At first, he was a little apprehensive, he told me, saying he was wondering if the campaign would look too far-fetched.
Local tourism industry watchers, admit the country is indeed enjoying a boom of sorts—particularly when similar destinations are struggling to shore up numbers almost everywhere across the world. That in a sense stands to support the recession free idea.
A group of businesspeople from New Zealand is doing a quick round of Rarotonga and Aitutaki islands checking out opportunities to invest in what looks like a booming holiday industry.
Booming holiday industry
Close to two dozen hotels and resorts of all types, sizes and description that are up for sale or are looking at equity participation to fund their operations or expansion plans have been lined up for the group’s inspection.
Almost every one of them, according to their owners or managers, boasts occupancy rates of between 80 and 85 percent through most of the year—a most enviable situation for a tourism operator anywhere. So why are all these resort owners wanting out? The type and range of what’s on offer is as confusingly broad as their reasons for selling. From one or two-unit bungalow operations to properties with over a dozen rooms are available and for reasons ranging from wanting to raise capital on properties where almost no expansion possibility whatsoever exists to simply wanting to quit—sometimes as early as two or three years after running the business.
One industry watcher and real estate agent in Rarotonga has an explanation. “It’s the herd mentality,” he says. “Almost everyone with some waterfront property reckons he can turn it into a goldmine by building a couple of shacks and letting them out. When they realise it's much more than that, they chicken out and want out.” 
The prices? “They’re quite outrageous,” says one of the visiting businesspeople from New Zealand.
“Looking at the small scale and limited potential for further development of many of these properties, it makes little sense to think of acquiring them anywhere at the prices many of them are being quoted—unless, of course, one wants to acquire them for personal use.” But, then, there is a recession everywhere in the world remember?
There’s no doubt that many of these properties are veritable slices of paradise. But even paradise must deliver sensible value for money, recession or not—and which it simply cannot, no thanks to dizzyingly high bank interest rates, which even the Prime Minister acknowledges is one of the country’s biggest problems.
South Pacific’s most magical place—but don’t take just my word for it. It’s not for nothing that this tiny nation of 1500 people has been rated by all the world’s tourists on websites like tripadvisor.com <http://tripadvisor.com>—which are increasingly what seasoned tourists use as primary sources of information because their content is populated by neutral and independent tourists like themselves and not travel agents or experts—as the best place in the world repeatedly for the past several years. It’s easy to run out of adjectives while trying to describe the incredible beauty of its lagoon.
For me, it clearly comes closest to my idea of the perfect place on earth—one that I have seen before only in travel brochures and screensavers, which I had always suspected to be a bit too photoshopped to be real. But this is exactly how it is. Of course, there are several comparable places around the South Pacific especially in the smaller outer islands of Fiji and Vanuatu—but Aitutaki is something else.
A cruise around the smaller islands that dot the lagoon like emeralds is an incredibly pleasurable experience. The opportunities for snorkelling, swimming in waters with perfect temperatures at this time of the year and, of course, the fruit and barbecued fish menu on One Foot Island are unforgettable. And unlike many such guided tour routines that are all too often marred by inane commentaries, the one on Bishop’s Cruises is exceptionally interesting and funny.
Keeping tourists enthralled with local legends, the crew doubles up as terrific entertainers putting on a ‘coconut show’ and playing live music and singing while guests enjoy their fresh repast. On the day I am on the cruise, the team engages in a timely rescue act when one of the more senior guests while snorkelling some distance away gets into some trouble and begins drifting in the current after developing cramps in the abdomen.
And nowhere else in the South Pacific are you likely to find almost all locals speak New Zealandese with that distinctive Kiwi accent—thanks to the Cook Islands’ long association with New Zealand.