Tourism Dep't wants tourism business vendors to see it for advice

The Department of Tourism is increasing the scope of its role throughout the country this year to see that locals understand suitable tourism products that will interest tourists before entering into business in that sector.

Acting Director of the Department, Donald Pelam, explains that the Department of Tourism has six programs they are rolling out. One of them is the Tourism Investment Program, which focuses on how to come up with packages to promote local tourism investments.

“Many times, now, many of the hotels coming to the country to set up, many of them come to the Department for us to assist them with information for setting up their businesses. This is not happening as much with our local entrepreneurs, who tend not to come to us to seek information or advice from the office,” Mr. Pelam says.

“With us locals, many times, people see someone coming up with a kind of tourism product such as a bungalow, they also go and try to create a similar type of the product.

“After they create the product, they find that tourists do not go to them and no one is using the bungalow. So, sometimes they will come to us and complain to us, but we tell them outright that we had no idea about what kind of product they were working on and they should’ve contacted the Department first to get some direction and advice.

“We encourage people to come to see us before venturing into their idea because some of the products they enter into, there’s already many of them around. So, we at the Department will discourage such ideas and tell them about the hurdles they can encounter and we’ll encourage them to do other types of products, which might be small, but because a lot of tourists want them, they ought to participate in them or create them,” the Acting Director says.

As a result of this, this year, he sent some of his officers to the provinces to promote different kinds of tourism products to the communities, especially the locals, so they understand suitable products that will interest tourists visiting Vanuatu, he says.