The South Pacific Tourism Organisation held it's first successful Media Roundtable last Thursday with media stakeholders, partners and social media influencers focusing on  regional sustainable tourism and how they can work better together to report and advocate for sustainable tourism.

 “Sustainable tourism is a new concept for the South Pacific and the media plays a fundamental role in helping us propagate the message to all stakeholders as awareness is key to advocacy” said SPTO Chief Executive Officer, Chris Cocker.

The powerful effects of media when used properly can bring sweeping changes of attitudes and behavior among the key actors in local, national and global tourism for peace, security and sustainable development.

At the media roundtable were representatives from Fiji TV, Islands Business, Mai Life, Fiji Times, Fiji Sun, Gold FM and Bula FM.

SPTO presented on 'Global and Pacific Tourism trends and performance', 'What is Sustainable Tourism', and 'SPTO's Sustainable Tourism Regional Program' before delving into breakout sessions for participants that focused on packaging messaging, as well as encouraging dialogue between media partners, on ways to cross promote sustainable tourism stories through different communication platforms.

This Thursday 27th September, we join the global community in celebrating 'World Tourism Day' on the theme of 'Tourism and the Digital Transformation'. SPTO recognises the growing digital space in the Pacific and is tapping into innovative ways to advocate for sustainable tourism and were delighted as a first step to have 3 Fijian prominent social influencers at the roundtable, David Solomone, Dan Matanimeke and Temesia Tuicaumia.

“As of January 2018, according to Hootesuite, Fiji has 500,000 social media users, that's 55% of our population and 470,000 of those social media users access social media platforms via mobile phones. That's 52% of our population that you have direct access to and our social influencers play a vital role in helping SPTO tap into that market with our sustainable tourism messaging” said Mr Cocker.

David Solomone who has a travel, fashion and lifestyle blog called 'Three Good Lane' said as a millennial traveller, he was paying for the experience of travel not so much the perks and after going through his first media roundtable it has made him more conscious of the impact tourism has on the environment.

“I work to travel and being involved in the media roundtable has made me more aware of my travel decisions, like for instance looking at airlines that offset their carbon footprints or looking at resorts that are more cohesive with the environment. It's definitely made me think about being a conscious traveller” said Solomone.  

This first session will be part of SPTO's roundtable series which will focus on building relationships with Fijian and regional media counterparts on various priority matters and topics related to tourism development in the Pacific Islands.

ENDS