Tourism Fiji CEO Brent Hill says they will have to work with what was allocated to them in the 2022-2023 National Budget.

According to Hill, they were hoping for a certain amount when they made their submissions, but now things have changed.

In the budget, Tourism Fiji’s Marketing was allocated $22m while their Operating Grant was given more than $7m.

“Tourism has been the real catalyst to open a lot of things up and I think from that perspective, we really want to keep our foot down. We are really excited about Fiji Airways flying out of Vancouver later this year. We just had Adelaide recently, so from that perspective, what we want to do is focus the money that we have on the markets that are opening.”

The Tourism Fiji boss also says with this budget which is an increase of around $2m from the last allocation, a few plans they were hoping to accomplish will need to be put on hold.

However, he adds that the message has been for them to continue playing their part towards the recovery of the economy.

Earnings for 2023 and 2024 are projected to grow by 50.3 percent (to $2,089.9 million) and 15.4 percent (to $2,412.7 million), respectively, in line with the consistency in visitor arrivals and rising per-diem expenditures.

For 2022, tourism earnings are forecast to rebound to $1,390.2 million, led by a marked increase in visitor arrivals coupled with higher per-diem expenditure (due to pent-up demand and higher inflation).