Friday 15th April 2022: It’s been a week since the Prime Minister, Hon. Bob Loughman Weibur announced our borders will be open for tourists and all international visitors on 1 July 2022 to Answer The Call of Vanuatu! The VTO team have been busy moving into the “Tourism Ready” phase of our border re-opening plans and focusing towards the “Marketing Ready” phase.
We will be moving to weekly industry updates so that we can keep you fully updated on what we are doing and what information we have to share.
This Week’s updates:
- VTO management team along with Air Vanuatu and Airports Vanuatu Ltd, met with the Ministry of Health earlier this week, who advised they are currently finalizing their revised Border Opening Road Map to submit to the Health Emergency Advisory Committee (HEAC). Once we have the final details of the protocols, these will be shared with the industry, trade partners, media and consumers through various platforms.
- The VTO and Department of Tourism (DOT) met to discuss support programs to help the industry be market ready. We should have more details to share on this in the coming weeks.
- The VTO and Air Vanuatu are scheduled to meet next week to review market readiness and market opening plans linking in with the Vanuatu Access Strategy. Our International Reps will also be meeting with Air Vanuatu teams in their respective markets.
- The VTO team met with the Vanuatu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) team and the Vanuatu Business Resilience Council (VBRC) to discuss what Tourism Business Readiness will need to look like for the July border opening and where and how support can be given.
- The Safe Business Operations (SBO) messaging has now been loaded onto the VTO Australia and NZ Vanuatu.travel websites and the teams will begin to drive their social messaging to this information, so that consumers fully understand the care being taken to make their holiday to Vanuatu as covid safe as possible. The team are currently boosting SBO accredited businesses social posts to their audiences provide further reassurance that Vanuatu is a safe destination.
- A global social post announcing the border opening has seen some fantastic engagement showing the pent-up demand for consumer desire to travel to Vanuatu. The post has reached 95,000 people to date organically and has been liked (and loved) by 675 people, 172 comments (many tagging multiple friends) and over 90 shares. Our teams have also boosted the post to their country audiences giving reach to the post. Some of our favourite consumer comments include:
“Yay! Had to cancel our holiday when this all started so excited to come back”
“This is awesome news, see you soon”
“Woo Hoo! My favourite place in the world”
- Our International Reps have also reached out to our Australia and New Zealand key trade partners to advise of the July border opening announcement. Over the coming weeks you may like to reach out to these wholesale partners to find out what they may need from you in terms of rates, covid protocol information, inventory etc. We will be sending out an updated email addresses and contacts for Wholesalers partners next week.We continue to encourage all our industry stakeholders to check our Industry Ready Checklist. This is a must as we all prepare for border reopening!
There are still a lot to do to get us ahead of the reopening in July and we are all excited to put all our efforts together to make this happen, with your support.
Stay tune for next week’s update! Have a safe Easter creating your Vanuatu easter moments.
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