Island Achiever
Morris Otto's Rebuilding the Hapi Isles image Management man at the tourism helm.
Morris Otto is the new Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau general manager. He succeeds Wilson Maelaua, who is now running his own tour company ‹ Tourism Solomons Limited ‹ as managing director. Otto came into the big job facing twin challenges of cutting costs and helping rebuild a tourism industry hit by two years of ethnic conflict. Thirty-year-old Otto has already embarked on a restructuring programme streamlining the bureau¹s internal workings.
Changes include:
- Cost cutting;
- Confidence rebuilding in the industry;
- Establishment of organisational and staff policy documents;
- Restructuring relationship bet-ween industry stakeholders;
- Reorganisation and restructuring the bureau;
- Implementation of redundancy programmes.
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"The whole aim behind these measures is to enable the bureau to live within its own means and effectively carry out its functions as the marketing arm of government," says Otto, who has an academic background.
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"The situation Solomon Islands is going through at the moment in terms of economic performance leaves the SIVB management with no option but to downsize and restructure in the name of efficiency."
The bureau hopes to improve data provisions through the creation of a department for market research and statistics.
Otto was with the Solomon Islands College of Higher Education (SICHE) as a management and marketing lecturer from 1995. In 1998 he took up postgraduate studies at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, at the same time working a two-year contract as graduate assistant with the regional university¹s management department. Otto returned to the Solomon Islands at the height of the ethnic tension and rejoined SICHE as senior lecturer and head of the management department.
Otto was supposed to have taken up a lectureship position in management at the University of the South Pacific beginning semester two. But he decided otherwise, having being offered the general manager post.
Solomon Islands' image as a tourist destination has, over the past two to three years, been tarnished by the ethnic crisis.
Therefore Otto and his team has the daunting task of rebuilding the country's image to live up to the ŒHapi Isles' slogan.
Otto's management and marketing post with SICHE involved small business. He wants to push this small business segment particularly with regard to ecotourism projects in rural areas. But first to initiate tourism awareness programmes; benefits, impact on community and at what level the local people will participate.
Some disgruntled tourism operators in the Solomons had voiced concern over the bureau's usual marketing strategies. Responsibility lay with individual operators and provinces to market themselves.
The concerned operators want the bureau to integrate marketing initiatives under the bureau¹s banner instead of each province going solo.
Otto agrees that most past promotions have been involved with promoting Solomon Islands only as a name. He believes that the bureau needs to take a step further. The first step is bringing key players together through a wake-up-call conference. In line with the 3rd South Pacific Tourism Conference in September, the bureau in partnership with the Solomon Airlines and the tourism division planned the Solomon Islands National Tourism Conference in mid-September in Honiara.
The theme "Solomon Islands Wake Up Call" will discuss government¹s role in tourism development, the bureau¹s role in tourism development, the relationship between Solomon Airlines and the tourism industry, the tourism association's role in tourism development and marketing and development strategy for the Solomon Islands tourism industry.
The conference is planned to mobilise all stakeholders within the industry.
