Toilets give Vanuatu village bite of tourist cherry
It's hoped a fancy set of public toilets in the north of Efate in Vanuatu will help attract tourists there.
Transcript
It's hoped a fancy set of public toilets in the north of Efate in Vanuatu will help attract tourists there.
Under a partnership with supporters from Australia and North Ringwood Uniting Church in Melbourne, Paunangisu villagers recently opened a brand new toilet block, which even has its own website.
Billed as the "Best Public Toilet in the South Pacific" the idea is to encourage tourists to make the village a stop-off point.
Robert Latimer, who's based in Melbourne, is involved in the Paunangisu Village Partnership, having made regular visits there.
He told Bridget Tunnicliffe the toilets will also provide better health and hygiene for villagers.
Robert Latimer: So locals who want to use it, charged 40 Vatu, so that's say 50/60 cents. So that's normal charge that you would be charged if you use a public toilet in Port Vila. But we're doing ours as the best public toilets in the whole South Pacific. If you've used the public toilets in Port Vila you would gladly pay 50 Vatu to use this one in the village, rather than that one. It's also for other people in the islands just north of there, the group of islands, the people come through this region of North Efate to Port Vila. But we're broken the market up because the village really wants to get into tourist activities. And because it's halfway round the island of Efate, if you're a tourist, it puts their mind at rest. If they know that you've hired a car and your driving halfway round the island, and they know that there's really good facilities halfway round the island then they're more likely to venture off. And then what we're doing with the toilet and the website, is we're looking to promote all the small little tours around the north of the island. And the toilet will be positioned within all of this, up to, just provide those first world facilities that people like.
Bridget Tunnicliffe: Do you think having a nice set of toilets here could also lead to creating small local tourism ventures around it?
RL: Not only supporting the existing ones, but the village itself has already trialled with real people, real test dummies who are friends who have gone there on cruise ships and we call it the village experience day. So people are picked up at the ship or where ever, they are taken to the village and there's a series of village experiences from coconut cutting to coconut tree climbing, basket weaving, singing, and just introducing people to the locals and visiting the kindergarten or the primary school or the health clinic or the church service. So that's a very simple, but very meaningful kind of grassroots experience for tourists. And the island of Efate of course has got the ring road, the road that goes round, it's bitumen road and the idea of that was to spread the wealth out of Port Vila into the surrounding villages around the island. In reality and I read a study out of Massey University from about three years ago that really a lot of that hasn't happened. It's not going to happen just by accident or by osmosis, if they put money into building market stalls along the road. But the locals were quoted as saying but the buses don't stop, and the cars don't stop and that's really where the money is. To try and tap into some of the wealth that comes in and out of Port Vila and Vanuatu, we thought a toilet and a sign on the road every five kilometres. There's nothing like a sign on the road saying 'best public toilet in the South Pacific' to trigger something in the brain, oh I need to go to the toilet, and once you've stopped if you've got a chance and engage and whether its bottled water or artefacts or take them on a simple tour, because the beach has got second world war artefacts. North Efate is such a hidden gem but we hope to help them develop tourist and business.
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