Vacation business to Fiji from the North American market has been booming.
So says Brent Hill, CEO of Tourism Fiji, who spoke with me during the Fiji Tourism Exchange (FTE). The three-day industry conference was held May 5-7 at the Sheraton Fiji Golf & Beach Resort near Nadi, bringing together more than 200 trade and media partners, along with local travel suppliers.
“The way we’ve started the year, you’re talking 18% to 20% lift in the first quarter from North America,” Hill said, mentioning that visitor arrivals from the U.S. and Canada are strong.
“I would love to … get maybe 10% [total growth] over the course of the year,” he added.
Hill also acknowledged that this sort of year-over-year jump in total arrivals from North America for 2024 won’t be easy, noting that 2023 was a record year for visitors to Fiji from the U.S. and Canada.
Hill credited last year’s success to his team’s North America-focused marketing efforts and the new Airbus A350 planes that Fiji Airways is operating on the carrier’s nonstop routes linking Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver to Nadi, located on Fiji’s main island of Vitu Levu.
“The advantage of that is people say, ‘These planes are awesome,’” Hill explained. “And also, you can just fit more people on the plane.”
Aggressive Airfares and Record Revenue
The Tourism Fiji CEO also noted that another major positive for North American travelers is Fiji Airways’ aggressive fares.
“I think United [Airlines], Delta [Air Lines] and so on have increased into the Oceania region — [to] something like 40% capacity,” Hill said. “And Fiji Airways is like, ‘OK, we’ve got to compete,’ so the airfare is really, really strong.”
Credit: 2024 Shane Nelson
During his opening-night remarks to the crowd of gathered FTE industry stakeholders — which included government officials, airline executives, hoteliers, tour operators and travel advisors — Hill said Fiji set a new overall arrivals record of more than 929,000 total visitors in 2023.
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And those travelers spent a record-setting $3.3 billion (FJD) last year.
“In tourism, we believe that over the next four years, there’s an opportunity to realize an extra $1 billion [FJD] to be added on to that — that we can get to a $4.3 billion [FJD] visitor economy over the next four years,” Hill said. “Of course, that relies on continued investment and flow through, but that’s really exciting.”
Talk about the positive impact of Fiji Airways’ new Airbus A350 aircraft popped up often throughout the three days of FTE events, and Akuila Batiweti, the carrier’s chief marketing and sales officer, told me the new A350 aircraft helped boost Fiji Airways’ seat capacity by 17% year-over-year on nonstop routes between North America and Nadi in 2023.
“For North America, we’ve grown quite significantly,” Batiweti said. “We fly daily with the A350s to Los Angeles. We fly three to five weekly [flights] to San Francisco. Then, in recent times, we added Vancouver, which we started at two [times weekly]. Now we’re at three, and the guys are telling us we should go up to four, maybe five times a week.”
Batiweti also says Fiji Airways hopes to officially announce a new nonstop flight linking Nadi to another U.S. city sometime later this spring — a new route the carrier hopes to begin operating as soon as the fourth quarter of this year.
Credit: 2024 Shane Nelson
“We are looking at Dallas; we looked at Seattle,” Batiweti said. “We’ve got two very strong Oneworld [Alliance] partners there. You’ve got Alaska [Airlines], and you’ve got American [Airlines], who we work with very closely. And you know what? I don’t think any one of those would be bad for us. I think it would be great if we flew to either of those [cities]. It’s just a matter of time before it’s one of them.”
Melissa Pomeroy, CEO of Newport, Calif.-based Fiji Vacations, said her bookings for the commissionable Fiji Airways Business Class seats have improved, thanks to the new lie-flat product offered upfront on the A350s operated between Fiji and North America.
“They’re pod style, so they go completely flat, and I think it’ll work for someone up to 6’ 4”,” Pomeroy said. “And people who fly up front — they know the difference. They want to know if it’s angled lie-flat, or fully lie-flat.”
New Hotel and Cruise Products
Tourism Fiji’s Hill also discussed some of the new and renovated hotel products in the works for the destination, mentioning that 100 rooms in the Crowne Plaza Fiji Nadi Bay Resort & Spa are now open, but the property plans to bring another 224 rooms online there by August of this year.
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Improved Airlift to Fiji
Hill also said the Westin Denarau Island Resort & Spa, which is currently closed for renovation, plans to reopen early next year with 280 rooms. Other openings in the works include 144 one-, two- and three-bedroom units at the Radisson Blu Mirage Resort on Naisoso Island near Nadi, slated to debut early in 2026.
Yvette Broussard, a director of product development for Classic Vacations, which attended FTE, told me she was most intrigued by the 17-bungalow Waya Island Resort that officially opened this February in Fiji’s Yasawa Island chain, about 50 miles northwest of Nadi.
“Waya Island is a brand-new build,” Broussard said. “It’s more in that three-and-a-half to four-star range, but it’s a new product, and it’s exciting to see a new product come up in Fiji. There hasn’t been anything brand-spanking-new in a while.”
Meanwhile, Fiji Vacations’ Pomeroy said she’s particularly excited about new 14-night voyages offered by Captain Cook Cruises, which explore islands in Fiji’s remote Southern Lau group, along with eventually sailing into Tonga, where guests have a chance to swim with humpback whales.
“No one’s ever done that before, because the Lao group of Fiji … there’s next to no tourism there,” said Pomeroy, who’s been selling Fiji exclusively since the late 1990s. “[Captain Cook Cruises] just did their expedition trip, and I saw it online the other day. It went to villages where they’d never seen a tourist. They were the first footsteps of tourism on those shores, and the whole village came to see. It just gives me goosebumps.”