Tourism Fiji plays down disruption

15 October, 2012 Anne Majumda

Tourism Fiji and Air Pacific continue to work effectively together, despite disruptions to the leadership of the tourism body in the past year, the airline’s chief has insisted.

Speaking to Travel Today in Suva, Pflieger, who is also executive chairman of Tourism Fiji, insisted the changes taking place are all “very good” despite the recent loss of both acting chief executive Michael Meade and former chief executive Josefa Tuamoto.

He insisted the unstable leadership of Tourism Fiji had not negatively impacted the airline’s success.

“Tourism Fiji is rebranding Fiji, separate and distinct to what is going on with Air Pacific but they will complement each other nicely,” he said.

“In fact, I see nothing but good things that have come about from change that is happened and is happening on the tourism side.”

Pflieger highlighted a raft of changes implemented in the last year that would benefit the destination’s tourism industry.

“We’ve got new creative agency and new PR companies in Australia, New Zealand and the US, and we’ve announced a new social media company and a new web company,” he said.

“This isn’t change for change’s sake, this is change to materially dial up the country as a destination and make sure that people think of Fiji top of mind as opposed to other island destinations.”

He stressed the importance of synergies between the two entities.

“We bring in over 63% of all visitors to this country so we should be completely aligned,” he said.