Fiji Tourism CEO Gearing Up to Bring Island Nation Out of Covid Shadow by December

Sixteen months have passed with tourism yet to reopen in a Pacific island nation that ranks among the most tourism dependent countries in the world, and among the most hard-hit by the pandemic. Prior to 2020, Fiji Islands' visitor economy made up 38 percent of the gross domestic product and provided upwards of 110,000 jobs, according to a report by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on the pandemic's impact on Fiji's tourism businesses. Additional challenges have ensued since Covid, including a tropical cyclone in April 2020 that affected 48 percent of tourism businesses, and a surge in variants this summer. But for the first time in almost two years, there’s hope on the horizon for Fiji Islands, thanks to vaccinations that are now advancing rapidly. On the heels of this news, Skift spoke to Brent Hill, the newly appointed CEO of Tourism Fiji and a veteran in tourism marketing in Australia, about the gargantuan challenge ahead in steering Fiji tourism in an innovative direction post-pandemic, and his early insights on placing the Pacific nation’s tourism industry back on track. Below is an edited version of the interview. Skift: During your time at the South Australia Tourism Commission, you faced huge challenges with the 2019-2020 bushfires, in terms of surmounting the crisis and bringing back travelers. How does that compare to the challenge you're about to take on now? Brent Hill: That's the thing, I think actually there are quite a lot of similarities in the sense that obviously, a lot of devastation and two different things, of course, a pandemic and a natural disaster. [caption id="attachment_438890" align="alignleft" width="240"] Tourism Fiji CEO Brent Hill[/caption] One of the things that was immediately obvious in South Australia was the media commentary about the bushfires, which was that it had obviously burned significant amounts of Australia — and certainly South Australia, Kangaroo Island, etcetera, had virtually burned down. So from our perspective on the ground, understanding that Kangaroo Island is a really big island, it takes two hours to go from one end to the other — so it was really important to actually engage the media and get a true story of what was going on across. One of the things that I've observed already with Fiji is obviously the commentary has all been about Covid cases and that is difficult, that is something that’s very real, but at the same time there's a really really powerful story about the