International tourism expert advises Fiji on crisis management

Australian based international tourism and travel crisis management expert and TravelMole crisis management correspondent David Bierman has been in Fiji this week speaking with industry leaders on how to manage crises such as the recent coup in addition to running a crisis management progamme for Fijian operators.

The intensive two day tourism crisis and recovery and management seminar was attended by a group of 17 Fijian travel professionals which included hoteliers, resort managers, staff of Air Pacific, tourism trainers and travel agents and in the two days David reported that they covered a wide sweep of crisis and recovery management.

[Pictured: Seminar attendees with Naomi Nagulevo who administered the course on the extreme right and David easy to identify as the pasty faced bearded guy!]

Also during the course David says that he ran simulation games on dealing with natural disasters and political uprisings and said, “I found my Fijian students were excellent actors playing roles as diverse as Australian DFAT officials, Chinese travel agents, Japanese tour operators, the Fijian Tourism Minister and Bureau of Meteorology spokepeople”.

The course was administered and co-ordinated by the Hospitality and Yourism division of the Training and Productivity Authority of Fiji, which is a largely self-funded, government backed statutary body in Fiji which provides in-service training for well over 1,000 tourism and hospitality industry staff every year, something David says we could to with here in NSW and greater Australia, showing that we have lots to learn from Fiji too!!

He said, “The large TPAF headquarters in Nadi where I conducted the course was buzzing and in addition to the people doing my course, other courses were being run on hotel management, cooking skills and customer relations skills, adding, “In December 2006 TPAF ran a series of 60 different courses all over Fiji during their tourism training week and TPAF provides an object lesson to the Australian and New Zealand travel industries which do a great job in pre-employment training training but tend to underplay the importance of in-service training by comparison with Fiji”.

Last Tuesday 20 Feb David also had the opportunity to give a lunch-time address to 40 top leaders of the Fijian tourism industry at the Tanoa Hotel in Nadiu, the working lunch organised by Damend Gounder, the head of Fiji’s Tourism Action Group which spearheads Fiji’s recovery campaign and Mr Joe Tuamoto who is the head of the Fiji Visitors Bureau.

David sadi that all Fijian FVB staff and many senior manger from resorts, Air Pacific and and hotels attended and that one of the issue which was most contentious apart from the managment of travel advisories was that of pricing.

He added, “As Travel Mole readers are well aware, there has been some serious discounting on tour product to Fiji which has stimulated people to come but we looked at the issue of whether heavy discounting was a sustainable strategy for Fiji’s tourism industry, with the session with the leaders lively and the feedback  received very positive indeed.”

He also said, “My stay in Fiji was too brief to make any definitive comments about conditions in Fiji but in Nadi and surrounds there was no sign whatsoever of anything other than life going on as normal – as you would expect in Fiji!”

Special Fiji Report by The Mole