Impressive Tourist Numbers Returning To Vanuatu

The National Airline Air Vanuatu is delighted to report that it has received an impressive number of international bookings for the remaining months of 2022. Consequently, the airline is considering adding more international flights to the schedule during this period.

The bookings from New Zealand have been particularly strong with many flights in October now fully booked. The airline is currently investigating adding more weekly flights to the schedule between Port Vila and Auckland to service this strong demand.

With a schedule including nine weekly flights between Vanuatu and Australia, the airline is delighted to report that bookings from Australia have risen more than twenty percent week on week for the past few weeks, thus indicating that Australians are travelling more and choosing Vanuatu also.

One of the ways in which the airline has supported the tourism sector is by providing the popular sales fares which the airline has placed in both Australia and New Zealand markets. Thanks to Air Vanuatu’s sale fares, most flights to Vanuatu from these countries have been cheaper than to competitive Pacific Islands. The airline has done this to support the tourism relaunch success and to support the sector as a whole. Unfortunately, with continued fuel price increases, these prices will not be able to be held at sale rates forever. Air Vanuatu reports that fuel surcharges will need to be recovered in ticket pricing soon.

The airline admits it’s still working on inflight services and like every airline still has much work to do to get up to prior service standards. However, these booking numbers are critical to providing the much-needed income, so that other services and systems can be improved.

“These booking numbers and full flights are the results that really matter to us now” says the Chief Commercial Officer Mr Wilson, “we will keep working on the international market as a priority, as we understand how important tourism is to our small island economy.”