Our future lies within us, we have a rich and beautiful culture to share with others, so the visitors too can feel one with us, writes Ruta Mave.

If day to day grind is the food of life, travel is the dessert and many stranded tourists feel they are severely lacking in vitamin sea. Living in paradise, we can’t imagine the driving need of those in city lockdowns to travel to see us in January when New Zealand has its own plethora of white sandy beaches and blue seas. Those who hated packing their luggage away for so long have been left with emotional baggage so when our borders open, an influx of beach starved city slickers will arrive on our shores, fill our resorts, shop at our markets and crowd our roads. They will love it and we will live with it.

The first time we opened grateful they visited us and many for the first time, they didn’t have any choice we were the only ‘corridor’ open to them.  This time around our travel destination nemesis Fiji has already opened and many long-haul destinations are opening and accepting Kiwi travelers.

With tourism looking for a new CEO, what direction will the Cook Islands take to encourage those with a disposable income to spend it here? Tourism needs someone who can take the helm and drive the money-making machine into the future to reclaim some of our country’s financial security. The question is should it be all about the money focused at the risk and cost of our community and culture?  Or will we appoint someone who can and will accrue greater financial rewards than previously for the country by promoting all that is great about our Cook Islands community and culture?  

Apart from the standard visual promotion of white champagne, coloured sands, crystal blue lagoons, and rose jeweled sunsets with a deep Barry White voice-over announcing ‘we are waiting for you’, what more is Cook Islands Tourism doing to say ‘who we are, what we are and why we are different’? While we’ve been locked away from the outside world, we still wore an ei katu to work, or to a social function. We still had our celebrations of tiare, sport, vaka pride, art exhibitions and agricultural days. It’s not like we put on a show of who we are ‘as seen in the brochures’ just for when the tourist come. These are important elements travelers want to learn and experience about us. Tourists come to see what they want to see, and most of that is sealed by the promotions they watch from afar. Once tourists arrive here, they look for where the locals go, eat, they answer surveys remarking how the people are so friendly and made their holiday better.

Fiji recently released their ad campaign to attract tourists and it has met some criticism due to its nature of having the locals take the subservient position to the obviously rich and white visitor. Let’s not be the one to prostitute ourselves for destination points. Let’s look at highlighting our people, our art and culture. Our artists finding the world stage in Venice or locally at Tavioni’s gallery. Let’s offer artist residences to further our promotion forevermore. Ireland does a great job in attracting anyone who will promote them with tax incentives and cultural scholarships.

Our vaka pride and agriculture could be turned into a tropical garden show during our Tiare festival with tours of local and resort gardens. Offer experience and lessons in bee keeping, ei making, using a bush knife. The gardening demographic is a large and powerful one with money to travel and explore Tuscany so why not here. It’s a good avenue to diversify and attract new repeat visitors whilst also growing our own rich gardens and local produce farming.

With the Cook Islands Games coming up next year why not spin the attraction of watching sport action close to home in a vastly different setting. If the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham is too far to travel, we will have the next best thing, promising action, drama and great displays of talent to boot. 

Our future lies within us, we have a rich and beautiful culture to share with others, so they too can feel one with us. The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognise you as a tourist, this is why many want to go away from the tourist spots and hang with the locals. The only trouble is everywhere is a tourist spot here in paradise. Let’s see if the new Tourism CEO can create and deliver us to the world, we have to give them all sympathy cards for going back to work after being on holiday with us. If we do our job right, they will be speechless when they arrive and become a storyteller when they leave, which is the best form of advertising you can ask for.