19 Apr 2010

Fiji Tourism hopes global travel disruption will ease

2:09 pm on 19 April 2010

Fiji Tourism is hoping the disruption from the volcano eruption affecting flights across Europe won't last too long.

"The air traffic chaos across much of Europe, caused by a cloud of volcanic dust, could ease overnight ."

Most Pacific countries are unaffected by the crisis, although several thousand people are struggling to get either to or from French Polynesia.

But the chairman of Tourism Fiji, Patrick Wong, says there have been some deferments of holidays, that will have an impact.

We are actually monitoring it very carefully, hopefully things will clear up and pave the path with the air space opening up. We hope it is only the interim forces at the moment, and that the airspace will open up pretty shortly, in the next couple of weeks, and pave the path for flights out of the UK and Europe to resume.

Patrick Wong says the UK and Europe is a large part of the tourism market, so he hopes everything returns to normal soon.