Tongan drive for more tourists

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32958, 3 July 1972, Page 9

Tongan drive for more tourists

Tonga, the last remaining Polynesian kingdom, is seeking tourists from New Zealand—but according to the head of the Tonga Tourist Bureau (Mr P. D. Wallis) “we are not a swinger’s destination.” In Christchurch on Friday to promote Tonga to local travel agents, Mr Wallis said

his visit, was the first serious effort to bring Tonga to the attention of the travel trade. Alrc.dy this year he has visited the western seaboard of the United States, Australia, and now New Zealand.

In the 18 months beginning September, 1970, Tonga had received about 4000 tourists by air and 23,000 cruise visitors. The normal length of stay was six to eight days. Mr Wallis said the Government of Tonga was continually pressing for better flight frequencies to the island. Air Pacific has five flights a week from Suva to Tonga in July, and it was hoped that Polynesian Airlines would, before the end of the year, fly four times a week into Tonga from Apia in Western Samoa.

Before his visit, little comprehensive information on Tonga was available to either agents or intending visitors.

Since the Tongan Government appreciated the value tourism could make to Tonga’s economy, it had embarked on a programme of controlled tourist development.

Besides setting up the tourist bureau 18 months ago, new hotels had been built, Fua’amotu Airport was being improved to medium jet standard, and a new airstrip in Vava’u (in the northern group of islands) will be completed later this year.

Mr Wallis emphasised that Tonga was not in competition with either Fiji or Samoa but rather was complementary to them. All three islands were different —as were their peoples and customs.

Tonga was only two hours and $BO from Fiji, and if anything was the place which, from the holiday-maker’s point of view, was perhaps the most economical of the three island groups. The Dateline Hotel, of international standard, was being extended by the addition of 30 rooms and, subject to satisfactory negotiations over the lease of the land, an 80-unit intemationual resort had provisionally been approved.