FJ$2.8 Billion Tourism Rides on Fiji Airways as State Guarantees FJ$200 Million

Fiji Airways carries about 70% of all visitors who arrive in Fiji, board chairman Nalin Patel told Parliament’s Standing Committee on Social Affairs on 13 October, Fijivillage reported. Visitors generated FJ$2,813.8 million in tourism earnings last year, according to the Fiji Bureau of Statistics.

Parliament unanimously approved a FJ$200 million government guarantee for Fiji Airways on 17 August, ch-aviation reported, after the carrier recorded about FJ$150 million in extra fuel costs in the second quarter compared with a year earlier.

One carrier, most of the visitors

Tourism earnings rose 10.9%, or FJ$277 million, in 2025 from FJ$2.53 billion in 2024, the bureau said in its March report. Australia supplied FJ$1.39 billion, or 49.4%, New Zealand FJ$634.2 million and the United States FJ$313.8 million.

The bureau counted a record 986,367 visitors in 2025 against 982,938 in 2024, an increase of 0.35%, The Fiji Times reported in January. Australians accounted for 452,422 of them and New Zealanders 219,301, and holiday travel remained the main reason for visiting, the paper said.

Dividing earnings by arrivals gives about FJ$2,853 per visitor in 2025 against FJ$2,574 in 2024, up roughly 11%, an Exepreneur calculation from the bureau’s totals.

Applied to last year’s arrivals, Patel’s 70% share implies about 690,000 visitors flown by Fiji Airways, also an Exepreneur calculation.

Fiji’s Finance Ministry puts tourism at about 40% of GDP once direct and indirect effects are counted, and says the sector supports about 120,000 jobs, according to a ministry fact sheet using 2022 and 2023 data.

In his committee submission, Patel said the airline operates about 23 aircraft offering around three million seats a year across 36 international destinations, Fijivillage reported. He noted that it is a full member of the Oneworld alliance, alongside Qantas, British Airways and Japan Airlines. Wikipedia’s fleet list shows 14 mainline jets as of August 2025, including four Airbus A350-900s and five Boeing 737 MAX 8s, with the Fiji Link subsidiary flying smaller turboprops.

“The challenge is to turn this available capacity into more visitors travelling to Fiji,” Patel told the committee.

Record revenue, then a fuel bill

Fiji Airways reported record operating revenue of FJ$1.85 billion for 2024 and carried 2.3 million passengers, its most ever, Fijivillage reported in March.

It still lost FJ$25 million after tax. The airline attributed the loss mainly to FJ$83.5 million in non-cash foreign-exchange losses on US dollar lease obligations after the dollar strengthened.

It ended 2024 with FJ$375.2 million in cash, according to the same report, and said more than 95% of its borrowings came from local financial institutions.

Fuel prices jumped after the Strait of Hormuz closed on 28 February, and Exepreneur has reported that the fuel shock cut about FJ$200 million from Fiji government revenue. Finance Minister Esrom Immanuel announced the FJ$200 million guarantee in the June budget, saying the airline faced pressure from high aviation fuel prices and was still recovering from COVID-19 losses, The Fiji Times reported.

“To raise our growth, we have to protect our tourism industry,” Immanuel told Parliament.

Chief executive Paul Scurrah linked the FJ$150 million rise in second-quarter fuel costs to inflation, supply-chain disruption and volatile fuel prices, ch-aviation reported in July. The airline has cut crew and executive allowances, deferred non-urgent capital spending, tightened hiring and revised catering costs.

Finance ministry permanent secretary Shiri Gounder said talks with the board covered routes and frequencies, the Sofitel investment and the airline’s resort check-in model. “The government must balance support for Fiji’s tourism industry,” he said, according to ch-aviation.

The guarantee covers borrowing from 1 August 2026 to 30 June 2029, according to ch-aviation. About FJ$123 million will replace cash the airline holds as collateral for standby letters of credit, and the remaining FJ$77 million will back revolving working-capital facilities.

Fiji Airways pays no fee for it. The budget also extended the period over which the airline can carry forward tax losses and introduced a temporary 5% tourism services tax expected to raise about FJ$70 million for the carrier, ch-aviation reported.

The State’s exposure

Government-guaranteed debt stood at FJ$1,131.4 million, or 8.0% of GDP, at the end of April 2026, according to the Finance Ministry’s Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update, as reported by The Fiji Times.

Fiji Airways’ guaranteed balance was FJ$340.9 million, the paper said, a figure that has been declining. The airline accounts for about 30% of the total, an Exepreneur calculation, close to the Fiji Development Bank at FJ$347 million and the Fiji Sugar Corporation at FJ$320.2 million.

The 2026-27 budget supplement reports “indications of potential guarantee calls from several financial institutions,” The Fiji Times reported in July. According to the paper, those calls relate to COVID-era guarantees on loans to small businesses, and Fiji Airways was not named among them. Several guaranteed entities were assessed as medium-to-high risk.

Total contingent liabilities came to FJ$1.7 billion, about 12% of GDP, the same report said. The budget’s projected borrowing for debt repayment does not include any guarantee calls.

In 2021 the Government took up its entitlement in a FJ$200 million equity raise, lifting its stake from 51% to 74.56%, and Parliament raised the airline’s total guarantee ceiling to FJ$561.4 million, Fijivillage reported at the time.

Ratu Naiqama Lalabalavu, then Leader of the Opposition, called the scale of contingent liabilities “surely unprecedented in Fiji’s history” during that debate. Professor Biman Prasad, then leader of the National Federation Party, told Parliament the airline had also borrowed FJ$25 million under a Reserve Bank of Fiji disaster facility in July 2020.

Exepreneur has not confirmed the airline’s current shareholding. Published figures conflict.

Exepreneur reported this month that Fiji’s budget deficit has widened to 7.0% of GDP, with public debt heading to 84.8%.

Beds as well as seats

Former chief executive Andre Viljoen told the same parliamentary committee in September 2025 that available hotel rooms remained one of the airline’s biggest constraints, FBC News reported. He named Dallas and Cairns as recent route additions, with more flights planned where demand supports them.

Fiji Airways holds 50% of Richmond Limited, the owner of the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa, in a joint venture with BSP Life, according to FBC News.

It has also bought into Vatutale, which is developing a 190-room Denarau resort valued at more than FJ$230 million and due to open in late 2026, the broadcaster reported.

Patel repeated the point in October, telling the committee that accommodation capacity limits how many transit passengers can be turned into visitors who stay.

ANZ Research economists Kishti Sen and Tom Kenny wrote in March 2025 that tourism’s contribution to GDP growth had probably peaked. They forecast GDP growth of 2.6% for 2026 and expected stronger growth from 2027 as new tourism capacity opens.

Scurrah, formerly chief executive of Virgin Australia and Pacific National, took over on 1 November 2025, Travel Trade Journal reported. Viljoen left to run Air Mauritius and remains on the Fiji Airways board.

In March, Scurrah told the Fiji Tourism Exchange that the airline had raised fares to cover fuel and that forward bookings were holding up, Karryon reported. He also said Australian demand had been flatter than it should have been, and that Fiji had missed out on growth in travel from Australia.

Concentration

Australia and New Zealand produced 71.9% of Fiji’s 2025 tourism earnings, by the bureau’s figures. Adding the United States and other Pacific island countries takes the share to 87.2%. With borders shut, Fiji’s tourism earnings fell to FJ$594.1 million in 2021, according to the bureau, less than a quarter of last year’s total.

Any call on the guarantee would be met from the budget. At FJ$200 million, the new guarantee equals about 7% of last year’s tourism earnings, an Exepreneur calculation.

Fiji Airways’ five-year plan targets a return to sustainable profitability in 2027 through cost cuts, route reviews and management restructuring, ch-aviation reported. The guarantee runs to June 2029, two years past that target.