Advertising Fiji in key tourism destinations will need to be reviewed with COVID-19 spreading around the world.

The Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association CEO Fantasha Lockington says the recent travel ban for Italy will affect tourists coming in from Europe, which the industry relies on heavily around this period.

Lockington says while at this time the Chinese market makes up only 5% of the total visitor numbers, the North American and European markets are heavily relied on for tourists however they will soon take a dip as our boarders have closed for Italy with more than 50 dead from COVID-19.

“So we are going to take another hit there because there are other parts of Europe that will be affected because Italy, Venice where the Coronavirus is rife right now they have a huge tourism industry where they rely on because their tourism areas where people go for are museums, the art and the culture and so if someone has it in those huge crowd they are simply passing it along whether they got on a flight, got on a cruise or went back to their countries.”

More than 300,000 visitors came in from Australia last year while Europe accounted for more than 30,000 tourists and about 47,000 from China.