Fiji appeals to DFAT over travel warning

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6/11/2006

Fiji appeals to DFAT over travel warning

Fiji’s tourism minister will call on Australia’s Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade to lower its travel warning, after playing down the country’s political tensions.

Tom Vuetilovoni said the increased travel warnings from the Australian government and the deployment of two Australian warships to help evacuate Australians should conflict between the military and government deepen, was harmful to Fiji’s tourism industry.

“We will be speaking to DFAT… to lower the level of advice,” Vuetilovoni said.

“It is harmful, but the situation has changed drastically with the military reassuring the prime minister that nothing would happen. Most of us here felt nothing would happen, but overseas you’re not in a position to know,” he said.

Australia is Fiji’s biggest visitor market, with more than 196,000 Australian tourists traveling to Fiji last year - 35 per cent of all visitors in 2005.

“There will have been some cancellations, and people will have had second thoughts about coming over,” Vuetilovoni added.

Addressing delegates at the annual Travellers Choice conference at the Fijian Resort on Yanuca island, about 165 km from Suva, Vuetilovoni said talk of a possible coup was “unnecessary and irresponsible”.

“And I ask you not to worry about it. We’ve had bad experiences in 1987 and 2000 and no-one, no-one, wants to go down that path again,” Vuetilovoni said.

He said one of the key fundamentals of the tourism industry reaching its target of $1 billion Fijian dollars by 2007 was through political stability.

Delegates at the Travellers Choice conference said they were unconcerned about talk of a possible coup, with tourist resorts unaffected.

6 November 2006

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