The nexus between mass tourism and politics has been widely validated in tourism literature; nonetheless, the impacts of political putsches on ecotourism are understudied in the context of the Pacific Islands, i.e., Fiji. This study aims to investigate how Fiji's political upheavals impacted ecotourism after examining ecotourist arrivals and revenue generated at KNHP from its inception till 2018. Additionally, it presents a comparative analysis of Fiji coups on tourism and ecotourism and examines the recovery pattern of ecotourism in the post-coup stage. The study implies both empirical and non-empirical methods. This research is based on field visits to the Abaca ecotourism project, Lautoka, from 2017 to 2019, and has employed quantitative data of Abaca's tourist revenue records; supplemented by conducting oral unstructured interviews of the Abaca project manager through talanoa sessions. The collected data were analyzed using Microsoft Excel 2010 and STATA and Augmented Dickey Fullar (ADF) test to check the stationarity. The research has defied the antecedent arguments of the failure of ecotourism projects in Fiji and made a first-ever comparative analysis of ecotourism data with mass tourism in relation to post-coup recovery tenure. It postulates an apparent correlation of the success of this ecotourism park with the democratically elected government of Fiji. The Abaca ecotourist park displayed potential to emerge as an ecotourism hub in the entire South Pacific, provided the democratically elected government could sustain in Fiji, which has been tagged as ‘coup-coup land’. Henceforth, this study can be replicated for similar destinations in the world.
Fiji is regarded as a South Pacific paradise; it attracts many tourists and cruisers desirous of a one-of-a-kind, memorable and long-lasting experience. The archipelago has witnessed an unprecedented rate of development in the cruise industry in the last decade, with an increase in the number of cruise liners as well as cruisers, especially those who take a halt for less than a half-day at a port and thus gain experience as tourists in Fiji. Cruisers opt for either pre-booked tours (booking made before disembarking) or self-organized excursions. Their experience during self-organized excursions at Fiji ports has not been studied so far. This study attempts to fill in this research gap. The study carries out a statistical analysis of the empirical data on cruisers' feedback on onshore experiences. This data was collected through a questionnaire survey of 369 cruisers who enjoyed self-organized excursions at Lautoka port anytime between December 2018 and April 2019. The study uses a Likert-type scale to measure cruiser's satisfaction; it carries out principal component analysis with Varimax Kaiser normalization and SPSS (demo); it further uses a factor analysis model to make observations. The results of this study indicate that cruiser satisfaction and behaviour are positively or adversely affected by many socio-cultural and economic factors. The study puts forward some constructive suggestions to achieve high satisfaction among cruisers.