SUN INTERVIEW - MARK SPURLING - TERRATREK MANAGING DIRECTOR

What are some of the things needed to stimulate the industry further?

I think constant research needs to be carried out to ascertain how we stack up against other markets. Our visitors have lots of holiday destinations to choose from and everyone in tourism within Fiji needs to play their part in making our offer that much better.

It is a time of increased pressure on our price whether it’s how our exchange rates stack up or our actual pricing. From my side running a relatively small company I have to admit it’s going to be difficult to pay sales taxes totalling 25 per cent whilst staying affordable to my guests.

What further opportunities do you see in

this industry?

As said the more we have to offer our guests the better we will be. In Pacific Harbour where Terratrek is based we are known as the Adventure Capitol. Our opportunity is to keep adding to this reputation with new innovative ideas and again many of these ideas can come from looking overseas.

During the downtimes in the tourism sector, what sort of strategies do you apply to make up for the slow period?

We do what we can to promote ourselves with our local clients and offer deals/discounts for corporate groups etc. we also offer direct booking discounts. In addition to this we are looking at expanding our offer but this is just at an early planning stage.