Up for the Challenge: Driving Canadian Tourism to Fiji

It’s difficult to think a destination as beautiful and sunny as Fiji could have challenges when it comes to driving Canadian visitation.  After all, every year, Canadians look to escape harsh winters and are eager to explore new cultures and adventures.  

But Canadians only make up for about 2% of overall visitation to the country, which in 2024 hit a record milestone with 1 million visitors arriving, 81,000 of them coming from cruise.

Being a long-haul market, Fiji faces competition from Canadians who look to the Caribbean for a sun destination that’s less than half of the travel time and the price tag.

But Tourism Fiji is up for the challenge and ready to compete for the Canadian market. The company is expanding its Canadian presence this summer with a yet-to-be-hired additional representative and launching an extensive campaign later this summer to target the snowbird market. Fiji’s low season coincides with the Canadian winter season and there’s hope lower pricing and increased availability will be enticing.

“Travellers visit because of the warmth of Fijians, and the authenticity of the experience,” Brent Hill, Tourism Fiji CEO told Travel Market Report Canada at the FTE (Fiji Tourism Exchange) earlier this week.

“A lot of destinations will talk about culture, and sure there’s a culture there, but it’s not particularly welcoming and you’re not welcomed into it whereas Fiji is very much a culturally rich and very welcoming destination.

Yes, you can go to Cancun or Barbados or elsewhere in the Caribbean, but to some degree, you’re shifting parts of Canada down there, with similar stores and such. We don’t have a single Starbucks on the islands and I think that’s a big selling point.”

Fiji Airways currently offers two weekly direct flights from YVR in Canada, with a third flight planned for winter. Their inline partnership with Porter Airlines, launched in April 2024, allows access to Canadians nationwide.  

“The challenge with Fiji at the moment is that it’s perceived well, we get a lot of good inquiries. However, people get a bit of sticker shock when they see the pricing,” Anthony Saba, VP South Pacific at Goway, tells us during FTE.

“We’re not comparing the same things; if your clients want just sun and sand, it becomes a hard sell. And that’s what Fiji has promoted itself as for years.”

Saba says Goway is trying to do things a little bit differently in destination to help drive visitation from Canada.

“For some of our packages, what we’re trying to do is go to the hotels and do, quote, unquote, ‘all-inclusive’ packages which is not the standard here and can be used as an upsell. We’re trying to work with hotels to give that value add so it’s more appealing on the pricing.”

Both Hill and Saba agree that driving visitation from Canada largely depends on communicating the unique offerings of Fiji. Saba says it also comes down to the type of inventory available.

“We have a lot of good, beautiful luxury resorts and the luxury space is still travelling. We need more accommodations for the middle class – not everyone is at the private or ultimate luxury level. We need more development of the three to four and a half star levels and we are starting to see more development of those. We can have a broader range of product that is – I like to use the term, ‘for the every man,’ and that’s critical.”

Goway, Tourism Fiji and Fiji Airways also have plans to capitalize on the stopover market, adding new routes and packages that tie in to Canadians visiting Australia.  Considering Australia welcomed more than 1.1 million Canadians in 2024, that is a sizeable market to tap into.

Fiji Tourism is also looking to work more closely with travel advisors via their training program MATAI, which is Fijian for “expert.”

“Most people coming to Fiji are still very much going to agent to understand and to book. They know it looks amazing, but they want the experience of an agent,” says Hill. “Our MATAI program helps to educate agents and the Canadian dollar goes further here, which also comes in handy for the sell.

Fiji is its own self, you know. I love the fact that you don’t have to travel huge distances once you’re here to experience this really, real part of the world.

“If you’ve got even a slight degree of adventure, Fiji is your place.”