30,000 inbound passengers confirmed for Dec while 40,000 for Jan – Batiweti

The Executive Manager of Fiji Airways Holidays, Akuila Batiweti confirms around 30,000 passengers are inbound for Fiji for December through various airline companies while 40,000 inbound passengers are confirmed for January at this stage.

It has also been revealed that many people who have made bookings to travel to Fiji have never been to Fiji and they chose Fiji over Thailand due to the packages.

Batiweti says inbound passengers for December is expected to increase over the coming weeks. He says bookings for January is increasing daily and they expect inbound passengers to increase up-to 50,000 for this month.

While speaking during the Tourism Talanoa organised by the Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association, Batiweti says 70 percent of all packages booked are for December and January.

Batiweti also confirms the trend is changing now where the Australians are not booking for 5 or 6 nights but it is hovering around 9 nights.

Batiweti also confirms the demand for seats is high out of Melbourne. He says people are mostly buying tickets to travel to Fiji from Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

He says they are also selling an average of eight to nine people per booking for holiday packages where they are seeing that multi generational families, friends and groups have booked to come to Fiji.