Costly airfares affecting tourism

Business

By CLARISSA MOI
THE high cost of airfares in the country is an impediment to domestic travel and tourism, according to the Tourism Promotion Authority (TPA).
Chief executive officer Eric Mossman said yesterday that the Covid-19 pandemic had affected the industry, however, it had provided the opportunity for them to reassess and see where the industry was and how to harness the potential within the country.
“One of the most important things that we have realised is that the cost of travel is one of the biggest impediments to growing tourism generally,” he said.
“So we will be writing to donor agencies to support us to conduct a study into the composition and structure of the airfares and look at ways that we can improve.
“Perhaps opening up the airspace, signing up agreements, bringing in competitors into the market, especially in the domestic sector, so that when we have competitive airlines competing within the domestic sector so the prices of (airplane) tickets can decrease.
“But these are some of the bigger challenges that we faced.
“All in all, we are positioning ourselves to move forward having learnt from the impact of the Covid-19.”
Former tourism, arts and culture minister Walter Schnaubelt challenged the new Minister Isi Henry Leonard to look at ways to work with the authorities in the aviation industry such as the National Airports Corporation and Air Niugini to reduce the airfares to encourage domestic travel and tourism.
Meanwhile, Leonard noted that given the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the industry, the focus should be at promoting local tourism and encouraged people to start using maritime mode of transport to travel across the country, given the high airfares.
“We should look within and promote local tourism,” he said.
Leonard further noted that the cultural festivals or programmes needed to be spread out to attract Government funding.
“Spread out the programmes whether it be sporting or cultural activities, snorkeling, diving or sight-seeing – have them programmed in the annual calendar and have the Government to fund those,” he said.
“Promote those areas that have the potential in tourism and use provisions within the laws and promote tourism hubs within those areas.
“One of the laws we recently passed is the Special Economic Zone Act 2019 where we can explore to create hubs and invite the industry players to come invest in them.”

5 comments

  • It’s not high airfares alone, additional factors affecting tourism include;
    a) accommodation costs
    b) general lawlessness, robbery, rape, etc.
    c) poor infrastructure and general services
    d) general hygiene (betelnut, littering, cleanliness)
    e) lack of government support eg., police, rescue, medical emergency services, etc

    We should compare ourselves with neighbors like Fiji. What makes tourists to go there in preference to PNG?

  • JG
    Well said. You hit the nail right on the head.

    CEO Eric
    Refer to JG comments. It won’t hurt to think out of the box sometimes.

    Cheers

  • Subsidizd travel fees is a way forward in encouraging and promoting local tourism within our country thus boosting provincial economy.

  • it is easy to blame Air Niugini and hotels for high costs but much of the criticism must be leveled at the Government itself. Air Niugini is operating under very difficult conditions, apart from flights being restricted to daytime flights reducing the utilization caused by crime that prevent intending passengers from travel after dark, many airports are not equipped for night landing, also adverse weather conditions. Over the past 12 months, Air Niugini has seriously been effected by reduce capacity restrictions but at the same time have offered remarkably inexpensive fares to destinations in PNG on flights where they know loadings will be poor.
    Then on top of this the taxes, levies in many cases equal almost the cost of the actual cost.
    We all want lower airfares but it takes two to tango, the Government must also reduced the additional taxes.
    In regard to accommodation, I get very annoyed when hotels, specially those in the Provinces are criticized for high accommodation costs, few people realize that the accommodation websites take up to 25%, in some cases more in commissions, these include booking.com, trip adviser, trivago, expedia etc and many of these companies are based overseas and pay no GST in PNG yet, the traveling pubic believe they offer the best deals. These international companies send many smaller hotels, guest houses bankrupt and the larger hotel chains refuse to allow their hotels to be sold on line through these companies. Dick Smith produced a video explaining the dilemma that has caused a great deal of concern and these multinational on line booking agents survive on the commissions the hotels pay them.
    Secondly the taxes and charges from Government statutory bodies are becoming absurd, this has been largely sponsored by the “user pay” concept which was introduced primarily to keep those in management the funding they have become accustomed to and in return, provide little in return, which in the main should be paid for my the taxed and GST. The donations by state statutory bodies in gifting money is a classic example of mismanagement of public funds, yet it has become a way of life in PNG.
    In the case of the Madang Resort, Kalibobo Village, cruises and diving we offer were discounted by more than 50% in 2020, like the airlines, we are all suffering very badly discounting our services at the same time others are increasing costs and in some cases profiting through the COVID Pandemic.
    Any democracy depends on the private sector, in PNG and elsewhere, the travel sector has taken a large hit, perhaps more than any other industry, the private sector remains the back back none to the economy and in 2020 and perhaps 2021 the travel industry will not be in a position to pay the same level of taxes, many staff have been temporally or permanently laid off, many travel related companies have been forced to close permanently yet the public sector staff are still be paid even those that have been paid off – this is clearly unacceptable and misleading when such statements are made by leaders in TPA. They should concentrate on reducing the symptoms why charges are believe by them too high.

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