SPTO

Sustainable Tourism Development dependent on Cooperation and Commitment

The comments were made by the new Council Chairman and Minister for Social Services of Niue, Billy Graham Talagi at the opening of the meeting Thursday October 3rd, which brought to an end a week of regional tourism meetings in Niue.

Moreover, Minister Talagi also acknowledged the China Pacific Islands Tourism Year 2019, which has been a valuable opportunity to better understand China and vice versa.

Regional Tourism Sector achieves 3.16 million visitor arrivals in 2018

Of this, air arrivals were 2.14 million in 2018, 1.6% above 2017 while sea arrivals, mainly cruise (day visitors) were 1.02 million,” said SPTO Chief Executive Officer, Chris Cocker.

These figures were released by the South Pacific Tourism Organisation in its 2018 Annual Visitor Arrivals Report.

The Report also noted that Pacific tourism receipts or visitor spending in destinations contributed US$3.8 billion or 11.1% to the region’s GDP and generated 131,010 jobs placing the tourism sector as a key driver of economic growth and employment creation for the Pacific Islands.

2020 SPTE to be held in Christchurch

The SPTE is the largest annual Business to Business tourism event organized by the South Pacific Organisation for the Pacific islands. It is a platform for sellers, which facilitates collaboration between tourism service providers, national tourism offices of SPTO member countries and international buyers including travel agents and tour operators from around the world.

Vaeafe is new SPTO chief

Mr Vaeafe is executive director of the American Samoa Visitors Bureau.

He replaces Papali'i Matatamalii Sonia Hunter of Samoa.

Felicity Bollen from Niue is the new deputy chair.

The announcements were made this week at the South Pacific Tourism Exchange (SPTE) event in Auckland.

SPTO members include American Samoa, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor Leste, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu Wallis & Futuna and China.

     

South Pacific promoted at ‘Meet the Pacific’ roadshow in Europe, UK and Asia

The roadshow is held prior to the 2018 ITB Berlin tradeshow, the largest travel trade show in Europe.

‘Meet the Pacific’ is a one-day business-to-business meeting through pre-scheduled appointments in six European and two Asian countries bringing together resort partners, tourism board and airline partners (sellers) from the South Pacific to meet key European, UK and Asian tour operators (buyers) who are committed to promoting and selling the South Pacific destinations. 

Effective collaboration with SIS crucial to regional tourism development

At a meeting between the SPTO and SIS members convened in Port Vila, Vanuatu, the countries agreed on a number of priorities including tourism marketing, capacity building, cruise tourism development, air and sea links and tourism investment, to name a few. These priorities have been identified as crucial areas requiring development and funding support and the SPTO has been urged to explore news to support and collaborate with its SIS members which face unique vulnerabilities due to their remote location.

Donor response pleases South Pacific Tourism Organisation

“And the donor agencies are asking for another forum like this so our chairlady has said that we’ll have another one next year,” SPSE chief executive officer Chris Cocker said.

Meanwhile, SPTO chairperson Sonja Hunter said: “We plan to make this an annual forum where our development partners and donors will hear what SPTO has achieved and also to find out what SPTO will be doing for the coming period. So it’s a good because as they always say ‘when they know they will care, when they don’t know they don’t care’.”

SPTO targets MSMEs, youth and young professionals

In introducing the new categories Pacific Dawn and Pacific Pearl, SPTO Chief Executive Officer Chris Cocker said: “SPTO considers Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises as important members because they make the bulk of our regional tourism industry and are responsible for driving economic growth in Pacific Island Countries. On the other hand, our youth and young professionals are the future tourism leaders of the region.”

SPTO to measure sustainability of Pacific tourism

RNZ reports economic, environmental and socio-cultural sustainability are the three areas which define a sustainable tourist operation.

The concept being to adopt a long term approach to financial gain and trying to limit negative environmental impacts and preserve local culture and traditions for future generations.

The manager of SPTO's newly created sustainable tourism development division, Christina Leala Gale, said often Pacific countries focused heavily on only one or two of the three areas.

SPTO offers innovative business training in Tonga

The series of six, hour-long workshops are being offered in conjunction with the Tongan Ministry of Tourism and New Zealand-based Learn.fast Centre on Wednesday 1st February in Nuku’alofa.

Topics to be covered include branding and marketability, Pacific tourism trends, increasing business profits, tourism marketing on small budgets, sustainable ‘best practices’ for small business; and crisis and risk management.

The next day, Thursday 2nd February, the trainer will be available to provide individual business coaching to trainees who require further assistance.