FIJI cannot compete in the Australian market with Bali or Thailand in terms of prices but its experiences are among one of the best, says Tourism Fiji regional director Australia Carlah Walton.

While speaking at the Tourism Fiji Industry Day in Sigatoka yesterday, she said changing the mind-set of the Australian tourist from price to experience was one of their core focuses when marketing Fiji to travellers.

“One of the challenges and our focus for 2017 is changing their mind-set, which is essentially what everyone is talking about and, that is from price to experience,” she said.

“We can’t compete on price with Bali and we can’t compete on price with Thailand.

“We have the spirit, the smiles, the welcoming nature and all of the things that you can do here are things that we’re going to capitalise on even further.”

She said tactical advertising and marketing campaigns have been strengthened with wholesalers.

“In the last three years, we’ve brought 650 travel agents over here for familiarisation tours and it has directly correlated to increase in passenger numbers in the last three years and it is still growing. So agent education is essential.

“Even when we do great road shows for travel agents to educate them where we have niche markets and show them what we have.

“The consumer shows are actually where the operators get to come over to Australia and interact directly with the consumer.”