How Fiji Airways Plans to Attract More Canadians

Getting travellers excited about Fiji isn’t a challenge, turning that excitement into bookings is. Faced with a long haul and higher prices, marketing the destination to Canadians is a group effort and one that Fiji Airways is helping Tourism Fiji face head-on.

Fiji Airways’ only direct flight from Canada currently is from Vancouver (YVR) which launched in 2022. The airline says it’s been successful – in part due to a large Fijian expat community in the province – and has plans to increase capacity in the fourth quarter of 2025 and into the first of 2026, to target snowbirds. Add to that a restructure of their overall schedule starting August 1^st that will improve regional routes in Australia and New Zealand in the hopes of increasing connectivity for stopovers and an extensive consumer marketing campaign and it’s clear the airline is a dedicated partner of Tourism Fiji.

“We have out of home billboards running and then four times a year we do a major global sale campaign that runs for about three weeks and is where we try to draw our base business for the year,” Vara Natuilagilagi, Senior Manager, Global Sales, Fiji Airways told Travel Market Canada during the Fiji Tourism Exchange (FTE) earlier this month.

“And during the time of those sales, we ensure that we have good fares in market to try and target Canadians to come to Fiji.

“We’re really trying to build more connections within Canada on our flights, not only in North America, but also in Vancouver. So we’re working on a few airline partnerships, to be able to allow us to connect better within Canada.”

The partnerships include Air Canada and WestJet which already gave travellers connection options via LA, and San Francisco and as of December 2024, Dallas. A year ago, the airline also signed an inline partnership with Porter Airlines which Fiji Airways’ Jon Murray Account Manager, Canada says has been an advantage for central Canada.

“As you know, WestJet scaled back a lot of their operations in central and eastern Canada to focus on Calgary in the west and, it brought some challenges trying to get fares from certain cities” he told us during FTE.

“With Porter on the market and growing, we’re hoping to be able to offer better connections in cities like Ottawa, Montreal, even in the East Coast, like Halifax. We’ve worked really hard to to get those in place and then, maintain the relationships so that we can offer single ticket service.”

Porter Airlines told Travel Market Report Canada that though “it’s still early in our partnership, the volume is growing outbound to Fiji (NAN), Australia (MEL) and New Zealand (AKL), with a notable increase in overall connecting bookings this year.”

Nadi, Fiji is known as a major airline hub of the South Pacific region, connecting to over 20 destinations internationally. Tourism to Fiji currently sits at just under one million visitors per year, the majority of them coming from Australia, New Zealand, North America and China; Canada represents only about 2% of those.  International visitation to Australia is just over 7 million, about 100,000 of those being Canadians, offering an opportunity for Fiji to capture a stopover market.

“We’re restructuring our routes a bit so that with the schedule from Canada, will allow our tour operators to build an itinerary that includes Australia and New Zealand regional routes,” says Natuilagilagi.

“If you look at the volume that comes out of Canada and North America into Australia, it’s quite significant, so for Fiji to be able to tap into that, we need to build the structure to allow tour operators to actually create itineraries that give Fiji as a stopover option. That will happen in August, and we’re in talks with hotels in terms of stopover rates and what those will look like.”

Murray says with the changes, advisors can expect to see more of Fiji in market and more opportunities for training.

“Fiji is not, and I hope never, will, be a mass market destination,” says Murray. “You’re not going be getting the million passengers a month coming in, and we don’t have the mega resorts to handle big numbers.

My role is to go out meet with the agents, do shows, make sure they’re aware of the product and that we have dedicated help desk to help with ticketing and any issues that might come up. Fiji is a unique destination, it has a unique culture. You’re dealing with some of the friendliest people you’re ever going to want to meet. It’s a genuine friendliness.

Anytime we can leverage our network to offer as much choice as possible, is a good thing.”