Coffee Contentment for Fantasha Lockington
Chief executive officer of the Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association (FHTA) Fantasha Lockington doesn’t pull her punches. She is widely respected for her fearless approach to business.
Her background includes airline and cruise boat management roles.
Mrs Lockington is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors with a Masters of Business Administration from the University of the South Pacific and several IATA airline related management qualifications.
She plays an active role in the:
■Fiji Higher Education Commission (FHEC),
■FNU’s National Training & Productivity Centre (NTPC) Advisory Board,
■Employment Relations Advisory Board
(ERAB),
■USP’s Pacific TAFE Industry Advisory Committee,
■the Fiji Commerce & Employment Federation Board & Councils for Tourism & Transport and Business Disaster Reliance, and
■the Australia Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) Board.
What’s one place you’d take every visitor to Fiji and why?
Taveuni - that uniqueness is hard to beat.
The lush vegetation, the genuine and often shy friendliness, the access to the most diverse holiday options that include magical rainforests, the most entrancingly beautiful beaches, hidden waterfalls and amazing dive spots.
And nothing ever feels rushed or crowded.
What’s your secret backyard favourite spot?
My garden.
With fruit trees and a range of vegetables and years of carefully growing lush hedges of colourful tropical shrubs and flowers, there’s nowhere better to sit and read and forget the world when it all gets too crazy
What’s your favourite place in Fiji for a pie/coffee?
I travel frequently between Suva and Nadi and keep a watchful eye out for new coffee spots and why they work.
For Suva, getting a great cup of coffee is often hindered by the inability to get parking, and you can only walk when it’s not raining - a Suva based drawback.
Coffee should spark conversation after the first sip hits home with that expectation of contentment.
If your coffee gets you only a few cents change from a ten-dollar bill, that coffee shop is obviously not catering for everyone’s pockets by choice, and contentment may not be what they were aiming for.
Loud background music that is obviously the choice of the young servers can also often be too distracting to spark anything other than dashing back out the door.
But, because I try to be positive as often as I can, I hope that the coffee shop owner is paying his or her workers a lot more.
Then that ten-dollar coffee makes sense to me. Along the Queens Highway, the Baravi Coffee Shop is no longer a secret known only to the Suva/ Nadi highway frequent travellers.
The baristas are friendly, they remember your name and favourite brew (and you can phone in your order).
The recent upgrade includes a chef who can turn out some great pies and other quick eats if you have the time to stop.
Fellow travellers agree the clean washrooms there is a great example of what Fiji lacks on its roads right around the country.
In Nadi, Vanua Chocolate cafe is tucked away in Challenge Plaza, Namaka.
Great coffee and friendly service is served with a range of chocolate products that threaten to go straight from lips to hips.
This is an example of Fiji’s emerging cacao industry and craft chocolate making that boasts bean-tobar quality products.
What’s one Fiji spot on the top of your bucket list?
This has to be a visit to Lau.
Having seen the breathtaking beauty of the beaches at Taveuni and the Yasawa Islands that I have always thought must be what heaven must look like, I have been told that they still don’t beat the beaches in the Lau group of islands.
So, I am keen to prove that statement correct. My husband’s family is from Kadavu, so it’s best not to comment on whether they make my list of paradise-like places.