TOURISM Fiji chairman and Fiji Airways managing director and CEO Stefan Pichler has called for the establishment of a Fiji Tourism Forum.

Speaking at Tourism Fiji’s Industry Day at Natadola yesterday, Mr Pichler said the forum was needed if the industry was to work towards the target of making tourism a $2 billion industry by 2020.

“We have ambitious but achievable targets,” he said.

“We have a fragmented industry and we need to ask how we can align ourselves, how can we define strategies and implement them in order to achieve these targets — to get more money spent in Fiji, more jobs created and more contribution to the GDP.

“That is why I will ask for a Fiji Tourism Forum to be established.

“We need all the stakeholders to get involved and we have to be speaking together more than just once a year.

“We have to meet on a regular basis and exchange views on the market, exchange experiences and we have to agree on a path to the future.

“We have to do this as an industry for Fiji as a country and for the Fijian economy.”

Tourism Minister Faiyaaz Koya unveiled a plan to take tourism from the $1.32 billion industry it currently is to a $2 billion industry by 2020. He said this would also create about 10,000 new jobs in the process.