In Fiji and Vanuatu Christmas and New Year is a very busy time on the tourist calendar, simply because it is Summer school holidays in Australia and New Zealand and families take an affordable overseas break that can coincide with Mum and Dad getting public holidays to supplement the annual leave days. The resorts are busy and many have special celebration events… but in Samoa and the Cook Islands it is the locals, not tourists, who book the flights.
Yes, the resorts in the Cooks and Samoa can be pretty much empty at this time. You see, a lot of Cook Islanders live in New Zealand and a lot of Samoans live in Australia and New Zealand and guess what, many of them want to go home for Christmas with family so they book the flights 11 months prior to travel and no one else can get a look in… and those flights over can be very expensive, which looks like the airline taking advantage of a captive audience at first until you realise that those planes have to make the return journey empty!
Photo: The Havannah Vanuatu