The Fiji tourism story of the day announces the restructuring of the Fiji Visitors Bureau. From now on, the organisation will be called Tourism Fiji.
As tourism still continues to struggle in the country, no one can argue the potential savings of moving their operations to Nadi. The physical separation of the government and the bureau might make the organisation more nimble so from that perspective, the move makes sense.
I'm a bit perplexed over the chairman's statement though:
"Fiji Visitors Bureau chairman Patrick Wong said they are confident that the move will enable them to make tourism a billion dollar industry in the very near future."
The connection between renaming the FVB or even moving their operations to Nadi with tourism becoming a billion dollar industry is a bit irresponsible. Tourism Fiji will need some straight, honest talk with a real plan in place to drive visitors back to the country. Renaming the FVB has no bearing on that and from a cost perspective, will probably require a whole boatload of new signage, business cards, logos, etc.. anyway. Again, I don't think the renaming is a bad idea as much as I think comments like this should be made carefully. Of course, it's entirely possible that the chairman was misquoted. Knowing our local media, it's a real possibility.
Everyone and their mother have an opinion on how to help the industry recover from the international spanking Fiji received from Australia and New Zealand following the coup. I'm no exception there. The fact that something is finally happening to try and put some structure around the FVB's activities should be welcome to the tourism operators in Fiji who are the loudest complainers. The article also referenced that a local will take up the job of running the bureau at the end of the year. The bureau has been running leaderless for quite some time so it's good that these steps are being put in place. Although it was not always the most efficient organisation, the pre-coup FVB seemed to get more done than the current local marketing heads (which a few exceptions).
I do hope the new organisation will consider more radical actions when it comes to marketing Fiji. The bureau brushed up against something good earlier in the year when they ran that Gordon Brown "Hibiscus behind the ear" FijiMe campaign in the UK. Unfortunately, they came up short from milking the campaign as much as they could have in the face of a little controversy.
If anything, that example of what it takes to get some attention should encourage more out-of-box thinking from Tourism Fiji. A MUCH larger online spend is an obvious consideration here and when I write "much larger", I really mean MUCH. The FVB has historically spent peanuts on their online marketing when considering their total budget spend. In the face of almost all consumer travel research happening online prior to a decision being made, Fiji is losing out to other countries here.
I'll refrain from commenting on the bulafiji.com site because it's not really relevant in this discussion. Not unlike the offline challenge, Fiji needs to learn how to drive traffic before it can convert traffic. Both have proven a challenge during the past 18 months. I'm hoping Tourism Fiji can make a difference.
