Tourism as an Economic Development Tool for Ovalau, Fiji Islands: An Analysis of Selected Issues

Abstract

In a quantitative analysis of the tourism environment for the island of Ovalau, Fiji, this research document aligns key elements of Fiji tourism and development policy with some important Ovalau tourism issues. For tourism to yield broad development benefits, Ovalau tourism planners must harness the beneficial characteristics of the islands' peripheral location, alleviate the obstructive characteristics of peripherality, and create an enabling environment for locally led tourism entrepreneurship. A pragmatic approach to local development is promoted where local initiative and control of tourism activities may lead to engagement with an inherently global market sector on terms appropriate to the local setting. The role of tourism planners is highlighted and a call is made for harnessing the limited local resources through a single, united, multi-party Ovalau tourism planning body. Although small-scale tourism activities are endorsed as being most likely to yield successful development outcomes, a larger local project planned for late 2005 can be seen as further evidence of the pragmatic local approach to tourism development. The need to raise local tourism awareness is also identified as local ambivalence to past heritage protection and tourism initiatives has led to economic activities on Ovalau remaining focussed on the potentially unsustainable tuna fishery. The research finds that tourism can indeed be an effective economic development tool for Ovalau, and can also be an agent of diversification beyond current reliance on the fishing industry. This research provides tourism planners with an outline of the peripherality issues confronting the Island, along with catalysts and inhibitors of local indigenous Fijian entrepreneurial activity. In order for tourism to contribute to economic development, Ovalau tourism policy makers must be able to address these main research issues.