Comment: Fiji spat does tourism no favours
There is only one word to describe the staging of two trade shows in Fiji within weeks of each other. Bonkers.
In the first week of May next year, Tourism Fiji will host the inaugural Fijian Tourism Expo, to be known as FTE.
Now you would be forgiven for thinking this is hogwash. How can it be the inaugural event when FTE has been running for years? And you'd be right. But also wrong.
What you're confusing FTE with is BFTE, Bula Fiji Tourism Exchange, which has been running since 1995 and, until this year, had the backing of Tourism Fiji.
BFTE will be held in the last week of May, three weeks after FTE.
Still with me?
In short, Fiji will now have two identical, but competing trade events, three weeks apart, both promoting Fiji as a tourist destination and both trying to attract the same buyers and sellers.
Tell me that's not ludicrous?
The background to this splintering of Fiji’s tourism industry is Tourism Fiji's dummy spit earlier this year when it withdrew its support for BFTE. It argued that it was not prepared to back a Fiji-based event that allowed neighbouring Pacific islands to participate and promote what it regarded as competing products to Fiji.
For what it’s worth, my experience of BFTE was a show with a heavy Fiji focus, naturally enough. There were sellers from other Pacific destinations but there was no mistaking it was predominantly a Fiji event.
Still, Tourism Fiji made its decision and you can understand where they were coming from.
But launching a competing event, particularly one that is so close to BFTE, is surely not the right response. It’s not right for Fiji’s tourism industry, it’s not right for sellers and it’s certainly not right for international buyers.
I wonder how much consideration was given to buyers. Even those from Australia and New Zealand, relatively close neighbours of Fiji, will have neither the time nor resources to attend both shows.
So from now until May there is likely to be an unedifying scramble from the respective show organisers to persuade buyers that their event will be the biggest and best. We've already had comments from both camps proclaiming how wonderful their shows will be.
And what are sellers supposed to do? How will they know what will be best for their business? Attending both shows for them is more feasible of course but there is still a cost associated with that.
Frankly, it’s the stuff of the playground.
Tourism is critical to Fiji. And a bickering, fractured industry does not serve operators or hoteliers well. The danger is that Fiji will be left with two distinctly average shows rather than one strong and positive event that unites the industry.
The situation is reminiscent of the farce last year when the two organisers of Australia’s inaugural Luxperience trade show in Sydney went their separate ways and planned directly competing events on exactly the same dates. It was, of course, utter madness.
Fortunately common sense eventually prevailed on that occasion and agreement was reached to stage just one show. Let's hope for the same outcome in Fiji.
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