Fiji Tourism CEO Gearing Up to Bring Island Nation Out of Covid Shadow by December
Photo Credit: Fiji Islands' tourism industry is preparing to reopen to North Americans by December 2021. Visual Hunt / Trey Ratcliffe
Skift Take
It's the first big light in the tunnel for Fiji Islands as vaccinations put the remote islands on the path to restarting tourism by December, with a new leader at the helm.
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 dir
