Fiji Focus
The Good News...Tourism's Expecting A Record Year
And more major resort developments
At a time when many other airlines are going broke, Air Pacific, Fiji's national carrier, is probably one of the Fiji Government's greatest success stories. It nearly flopped, but has made money for a dozen years, except in 2000/2001 when it lost F$38.5 million when tourism crashed after a coup. It bounced back to make F$9.6 million (US$4.4 million) for the year ending March 2002, despite another hit on tourism caused by the terrorism attacks in America, and despite millions more added to its costs by soaring fuel prices and mandatory new security measures.
Most of the 400,000 plus passengers it carries annually are tourists. Its aim is to carry at least half of all the tourist traffic to and from Fiji. At the end of this year, Air Pacific, which has the Australian airline, Qantas, as a 46 percent shareholder, will make a decision between Airbus and Boeing about future needs for two wide-bodied jets for its routes to Los Angeles, Japan and Australia.
- ADVERTISEMENT -
Tourism is Fiji's greatest money-earner, and money that spreads right through the country, although the Fiji Hotel Association groans that the government doesn't really seem to understand this. Fiji is the South Pacific's number one destination, catching twice more visitors than French Polynesia (Tahiti), the number two destination.
Fiji has about 5000 hotel rooms. But Air Pacific has tried to raise money for its own hotel, saying there is not enough of the quality it needs to keep up with the current 17 percent growth of business. The Fiji Visitors Bureau had forecast 370,000 arrivals this year. But it now expects the number to exceed 400,000, close to the 1999 record of 409,955. The Fiji Visitors Bureau reckons the country needs to open at least one good 300-room resort annually to cope with predicted business.
While numerous small upmarket outer islands have blossomed in the last 15 years, only one largest development, the recently completed 138-apartment Trendwest timeshare complex at Denarau Island has appeared. New Zealand investors are leading the rush at Denarau for villas marketed by Tabua Investments. Now an era of serious investment in major resort development is opening. Projects include:
- Hilton Resort and Spa: New Zealand developers have begun work on a F$170 million (US$74 million) scheme for a 110-room hotel, 317 villas, five restaurants, and two-swimming pool complex at Denarau Island with the first stage to open at the end of 2003.- Work at Natadola Beach, 50 kilometres towards Suva from Nadi Airport, will begin in the next few months with the first stage of a 12-year scheme for building a resort town of about 15,000 people, with at least four hotels, and all other amenities associated with such developments. Construction of the first resort, to be run by Le Meridiene, was due to begin in June 2004. Le Meridiene will contribute F$8 in equity to the F$100-million hotel, Colonial life group, established in Fiji for more than a century, will invest F$5 million. The European Investment Bank and International Finance Corporation, a World Bank agency, are also interested.
- Upmarket United States operator Rosewood Hotels & Resorts will manage a 75-room property now underway, with accompanying villas, at Taunovo Bay, 55 kilometres from Suva, by Coral Coast Properties, a United States investor.
- Vulani Lagoon, a 265-hectare property with a two-kilometre beach, is a seven-minute drive from Nadi Airport. With completed infrastructure, the development, with seven hotels and two golf sites and also villa sites, is being marketed by local developer Chater Properties as a joint venture, a partnership, or for outright sale.
Sales of freehold villa properties of up to five hectares are beginning to boom at Denarau, Savusavu on the island of Vanua Levu and by Taveuni Investment Ltd at Soqulu Estate on the island of Taveuni. United States, European, Australian and New Zealand investors have built or are building about 90 villas in the Savusavu district, and there has been mainly heavy Australian and New Zealand investment in villa sites at Denarau.
