While international borders are closed, local Vanuatu agritourism businesses have gathered for Agritourism Business Support Week, held at Breakas Beach Resort in Port Vila.
The event saw thirty leading agritourism operators discuss ways to ready their products for the return of Australian tourists.
The Agritourism Business Support Week event is part of the Vanuatu Government’s package of support for tourism businesses and is intended to support growth of the sector.
Vanuatu is blessed with a good climate and volcanic soils, and visitors enjoy not only sampling the food and produce of Vanuatu but also learning about the Ni-Vanuatu culture through agritourism experiences that take them behind the scenes of food production in Vanuatu.
According to the CEO of the Vanuatu Tourism Office (VTO), Adela Issachar Aru, “Vanuatu has fantastic agritourism experiences and with the government’s support we are looking to further develop these experiences for tourists to enjoy. We will be partnering with Air Vanuatu to distribute information on food experiences and build agritourism into marketing platforms such as our annual Tok Tok travel trade event”.
A range of Vanuatu agritourism businesses attended the event. Pui Lodge and Tours in Luganville, Espiritu Santo has a farm-to-table tour where guests can join in on harvesting, preparing, and cooking local foods. Also attending from Espiritu Santo was Serah Wells who owns a botanical garden where visitors can go to learn about traditional herbal medicines, local fruits, vegetables, roots and flowers that are native to Vanuatu.
Attending from Maewo Island was Hanare Cultural Village Tour who offer traditional food preparation, prawn harvesting, water taro harvesting, kastom dancing, and river-based water activities.
From Efate, Eden on the River presented their nature-based, soft-adventure experiences set amongst beautiful tropical gardens and a working sheep farm.
The Director of Vanuatu’s Department of Tourism, Jerry Spooner, was pleased with the outcome of the event, “I’m so impressed with the positive energy during this week, there were so many smiles and laughs and excitement about applying the knowledge learnt this week to improve our agritourism offering”.
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