Press Releases

The Tourism Authority of Kiribati (TAK) offices in Tarawa and Kiritimati hosted the last sets of the Pacific Trade and Invest (PTI) Australia’s Advance Tourism Digital webinars for their respective tourism operators on Wednesday 04 November 2020.

The webinar covered Content Marketing, Distribution Strategy and Online Payment Solutions and were an extension of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Market (SEM) online workshops that were held earlier in October.

TAK is leading its industry’s efforts to strengthen Kiribati’s online presence and believes that such an initiative by PTI positively contributes to growing capacity in the digital marketing space for its tourism operators. TAK acknowledges that the content of the webinars was applicable given the status quo in international tourism and the training has helped open their minds to the opportunities available through an effective digital marketing program.

The webinars were attended by 8 operators in Tarawa and 4 operators in Kiritimati.

The Tourism Authority of Kiribati (TAK) in partnership with the Pacific Trade and Invest (PTI) Australia and World Hotel Link (WHL) hosted a digital marketing webinar for 16 hotel operators in from Tarawa, Abaiang and Kiritimati on Wednesday 21 October 2020.

The program is part of a series of Advanced Digital Tourism Webinars organised by PTI for tourism operators across the Pacific. There Kiribati webinars covered Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Content Marketing.

TAK acknowledged the value of such webinars and how they contribute to its capacity building initiatives for tourism operators during the COVID-19 pandemic.

CEO, Petero Manufolau said that the webinar highlighted the importance of digital marketing management to participating hotels. He added that to be successful, Kiribati tourism operators will need to fully embrace the requirements of this competitive digitised global tourism business environment and be willing to adapt to the new normal in travel and hospitality marketing.

Attendees appreciated the relevance of the webinar to their businesses and acknowledged that information gathered will be put to good use as they wait for international borders to open.

TAK and PTI will host second webinar on Distribution Strategies and Payment Solutions on 04 November 2020.

The Tourism Authority of Kiribati (TAK) made its first official visit to the Chinese Embassy in Bairiki on Monday, 12 October 2020 on the invitation of Counsellor Mr. Huang Xuehu.

Led by CEO, Mr Petero Manufolau, the TAK contingent was made up of the Heads of the Marketing, Training & Development and Research & Statistics Divisions.

The visit gave TAK the opportunity to update Counsellor Huang on the organisation and its strategic priorities.  In his brief, TAK CEO emphasized the important role that the Tourism Authority has in fulfilling government of Kiribati’s (GoK) KV20 goal of making tourism a contributor to economic growth.

TAK also acknowledged the People’s Republic of China’s endorsement to grant Kiribati approved destination status in 2019 and believes that a sustainable approach to the Chinese international outbound travel market has the potential of help restart the destination post Covid-19.

Counsellor Huang expressed his team’s support for the work that TAK will undertake to help reset the tourism industry as they recognize that this industry has the potential to help drive the economy of Kiribati.

TAK is part of the World Food Day planning and preparation Committee and working closely together with Agriculture & Livestock Division (ALD) for a better commemoration of the World Food Day for 2020.

The world food day is celebrated on the 16^th of October every year and this year theme is based on: “Grow, Nourish, Sustain, Together, Our Actions Are Our Future”.

TAK is recognized as a one sector that could contribute positively to the planning of the event due to its heavy reliance on food industry as one of the key factors to the quality experience of the visitor.

Home gardening competition, traditional cuisine cookery competition, food presentation competition using the local materials and organic produces and beauty contest using produces that are organically grown is how the World Food Day will be celebrated in Kiribati especially by key communities who are part of the World Food Day committee.

This year, Kiribati will commemorate the World Food Day on the 28 October and will be led by the Agriculture and Livestock Division under the MELAD.

The Tourism Authority of Kiribati (TAK) earlier this week congratulated the Kiribati Chamber of Commerce and Industries (KCCI) on successfully securing a grant that will help restart the Kiribati tourism industry.

Through the US. Embassy of Fiji’s Economic Recovery Project Grant, KCCI in partnership with TAK have secured a US$25,000 grant to implement the ‘Reset Kiribati’ project which will be implemented between September – November 2020.

The Reset Kiribati is a post COVID-19 economic recovery strategy that aims to prepare local accommodation, transport providers and restaurants for the ‘new traveler’.

The project will be implemented in 4 phases and these include the development of the new travel protocol, training workshops for tourism service providers, supply of Covid safety materials and the monitoring of Covid protocols. This project will cover South Tarawa, North Tarawa, Abaiang and Kiritimati.

TAK is confident that through the implementation of COVID-19 travel safety practices, tourism business operators will be able to normalize their operations once international flights resume. In the long-term, TAK agrees that this project will also help lay the foundation for a new and cleaner travel destination. TAK envisages that these ‘new travellers’ will have hygiene expectations which this project will help address.