Travel wholesalers visit Cook Islands

The Tourism Corporation are hosting a number of travel wholesalers from New Zealand and Australia for a few days. They began with a session of meet and greet held at the Crown Beach Resort on Friday morning between the wholesalers and various accommodation property owners and managers.
The travel wholesalers included Go Holidays, House of Travel, Flight Centre, Mondo, Air New Zealand Holidays and United Travel.
Tourism industry people from Rarotonga included Tourism Corporation chairman Tata Crocombe (Rarotongan Beach Resort and Spa) and Te Tika Matiapo (Little Polynesian), Debbie and Garth from Sunset Resort to name a few.
The chairman welcomed all wholesalers, many of whom are here for the first time and a handful who are return visitors. It is all about becoming familiar with what the Cook Islands – especially Rarotonga and Aitutaki – have to offer the travelling public.
Jo Kennedy from Air New Zealand said they could feel the spirit of Kia Orana when they arrived and that special feeling is difficult to convey to a person who has not yet visited the Cook Islands. Te Tika Mataiapo, Dorice Reid agreed and said you can feel the spirituality even though you cannot see it.
After the meet and greet, the visitors will fly over to Aitutaki to see for themselves what effect the recent cyclone damage may have had on tourism and the facilities for visitors. Crocombe assured them that all the infrastructure was back in place, and that Government had a multi million dollar reconstruction programme under consideration to rebuilt the destroyed homes.
Jeremy Goodwin and Nane Matapo were the Tourism Corporation representatives at the session on Friday.

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