Cover Story
Tourism Booming, so Why are Islanders Still Leaving?
Wage boost might be too little too late.
A middle-aged Cook Islands man is in the newsroom of the country¹s only daily newspaper. He ums, ahs about how to put across his concern to a reporter.
"What is the ..." he begins to ask.
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"How do you ..." he tries again.
These people are permanent residents," he finally says. "But they are not Kiwis or Australians. They are ..."
Again he searches for the right word. "... Chinese. Can they own a company without any local partner? What I am saying is that in two or three decades, these people will be in control.
What are we doing about it?"
Three and a half decades after self-government, Cook Islanders are still deeply sensitive and badly informed about the vagaries of development that allow foreigners to start new businesses. Even if those -foreigners' work hard, keep a low profile– and have been in the country for a decade or two.
In fact, more and more Cook Islanders are benefiting from the year-and-a-half-old tourism boom. Three-and-a-half years ago, in September 1997, figures from Statistics Cook Islands showed that nine out of 10 tourists stayed in a hotel or motel, mostly foreign owned.
By March 2001, that figure had dropped to three out of four. A quarter of all visitors now stay in private homes.
This move away from hotels and motels follows the collapse of government finances in 1996. Tourism also suffered a loss of funding for marketing and the industry slumped when the country could least afford it. As thousands of people lost their jobs and left for overseas, there was a glut of houses.
It was two years later, but when tourism picked up again, it did not take long before the industry figured out that extra rooms could be found in empty family homes. There are now four property agencies where before there was just one.
Even with dozens of homes on the tourism market, however, Cook Islands tourism is at capacity levels.
Rooms in the larger properties were at 81% occupancy by the end of last year, compared with 57% in 1996. Overbookings are common.
A shrinking population has put further pressure on properties to perform which they have done suprisingly well.
Eight out of 12 sectors surveyed by the Cook Islands Tourism Corporation over the past two years have shown small but still noticeable improvements. Departing tourists gave the thumbs up to restaurants and rental companies especially.
"I thought the results would be worse than that," says Tourism Corporation chief executive Chris Wong. "It¹s pleasing to note that the industry has been able to carry through."
But there has also seen significant increases in the number of people who rate their holidays as worse than "poor" or a less than encouraging "adequate."
In the year to March 2000, before things got really busy, 51,000 tourists visited. 502 found their stay "not acceptable" : a category worse than "poor": or about 1 in every 100 visitors. 953 tourists found their stay "poor" : about 1 in every 50. An alarming 4677 tourists described their stay as a teeth clenching "adequate" : about one in every 11 visitors.
Only 233 out of the 51,000 answered "no" to the question of whether they would recommend the Cook Islands to a close friend. A further 1675 answered "possibly."
Wong blames the drop in satisfaction rates on the lower end of the market to the former family homes now being rented out to tourists.
Stories about cockroaches, leaky taps, electric stoves with no working ovens and only one element switched on are beginning to do the rounds.
"We have no control over that because people are not booking with recognised travel agents, they are going directly to them," says Wong.
Indeed, tourists give the thumbs down in four areas: kitchens, bedrooms, housekeeping and reception.
Part of the problem might be traceable to an otherwise welcome innovation - the Internet. More than two dozen tourism properties market themselves and take bookings directly over the Internet.
Prior to the wonders of the world-wide web, smaller and bigger properties alike sought the clout and prestige of being part of the Cook Islands international marketing programme. Only properties signed up with the Tourism Corporation's accreditation scheme would be promoted. While the scheme was voluntary, monitoring of standards at least did take place.
Now only 40 out of some 61 accommodation properties listed in the Yellow Pages are registered with the Tourism Corporation¹s accreditation scheme.
A similar percentage exists among restaurants, rental companies and other services.
Cabinet ministers set up a Relocation Taskforce to lure Cook Islanders back from overseas. But, for the past 12 months, they have ignored calls from their Financial Secretary, Kevin Carr, to survey why workers are leaving in the first place. Concerns over migration are, however, growing. As an exercise, one media worker put a rough average on rates of migration (1000), births (400) and deaths (100) over the past five years and projected forward. According to the guesstimate, the last Cook Islander will leave this country in 2021.
Not very likely, to be sure, but an indication of the seriousness of the population problems facing the region¹s fourth smallest country. Even the Chamber of Commerce is calling on members to do more for their workers. Migration is slowing but only when compared to last year¹s highest ever total of 1492 leaving in a 12-month period. One answer might be in a suggestion made last month by Tourism Corporation¹s Wong.
He wants to propose that employers hand over an equivalent to one percent of their wage bill to a proposed National Training Centre, a la Fiji. Certainly that will help raise and maintain standards. It will only do the same for migration if the main beneficiaries of the Cook Islands tourism boom also raise and maintain pay and working conditions.
A recent boost to the minimum wage of US$2 an hour, set by law, may be good by some Asian and Pacific standards. For Cook Islands workers with free access to the much bigger and better paying job pools of Australia and New Zealand, however, it is too little too late.
