Cover Story
Tourism Still #1 Foreign Exchange Earner
But more beds and airline capacity needed
Exceeding by a couple of tens of millions of dollars what Samoans abroad send back home, tourism is Samoa’s biggest single foreign exchange earner.
Travel netted S$148.7 million in 2001, according to the Central Bank of Samoa, and S$109.9 million in the year before. How many visitors does Samoa get? The official figures are 87,688 in 2000 and 88,200 last year.
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But as many as two-thirds of these are “VFRs”, meaning “visiting friends and relations”, according to Oscar Netzler, Samoa Visitors Bureau’s marketing and promotion man. That means homesick expatriate Samoans who visit home.
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Since most spend as much as foreign tourists, mainly visitors from Australia and New Zealand but also the United States ruled American Samoan, they are more than welcome. But they do tend to fill airline seats and hotel bedrooms that it can be difficult for New Zealanders and Australians to make air and hotel bookings, particularly during peak Christmas season.
Actually “holiday” arrivals, meaning non-VFRs, in 2000 totalled only 28,433. Dependent on the national airline, Polynesian, and Air New Zealand, and excluding simple village fales, Samoa currently has only 817 hotel rooms, of which 593 are in Apia.
“We don’t have sufficient beachside accommodation. Until we address that issue we will always have trouble winning more airline capacity,” Netzler says.
Until they know there are more beds for tourists, airlines are not prepared to supply more seats to fly visitors into the country.
“It is hard to put in more marketing dollars when you have only 300 international-class rooms and only 50 beachfront rooms,” he says.
One of Samoa’s top beach resorts, the Sinalei, has just closed for a year because it has been leased by a group of culture-keen Europeans as a temporary private retreat.
“This gives us fewer options,” Netzler says. At last, after years of disappointment, it appears that overseas investors are serious about a scheme for a 130-room beach bungalow resort near the international airport and a NZ$27 million, 90-room hotel near Apia. No firm construction commencement and opening dates have been published yet. But the bureau is optimistic enough to cautiously begin counting some chickens before they hatch.
Netzler says it is hard to sell Samoa abroad with a budget of S$2.7 million this year, including S$1 million for marketing. He is hoping that the advent of the two new hotels will persuade the government that boosting the bureau’s budget will be a fine investment for it in the way of tourism-derived revenue.
The Government has just published a tourism development plan for 2002-2006 and the Samoa Visitors Bureau has now changed its name to Samoa Tourism Authority for the implementation of the plan.
The business of promoting Samoa will be concentrated in Australia and New Zealand, and the target is for an annual growth of visitors of 5-10 percent a year.
The past strategy of branding Samoa as “the Pacific’s best kept secret” and being “the heart of Polynesia” has been dumped for a new brand of “Treasured islands of the Pacific.”
“We are crossing our fingers for new accommodation to come through; if it comes through we have a case for more money,” Netzler says. “At present the vast majority of tourist dollars are from the VFR market.
“Our product is not mass tourism, but there is always a market to develop in terms of being a safe destination. The old marketing strategy was very strong on culture, but surveys show that culture is number eight on the list of what visitors want.”
