Roderick Bay Beach Bungalow and Pelican Shipping Ltd successfully organised a one day cruise trip to Ngella Islands, Central Province as part of the Easter Monday celebration.
The trip according to the director and owner of Roderick Bay Beach Bungalow Mr Patrick Sara and the Manager of Pelican Shipping Ltd Mr Romeo is to promote tourism.
A total of 235 passengers boarded MV Pelican 1 vessel and headed straight to Roderick Bay in Ngella Islands to celebrate their Easter Monday outside of the busy Honiara town.
The two officials said, such cruise trip was an initiative intended to promote the struggling local tourism industry in the country.
They told this paper that the Roderick Bay trip on Monday was purposely to promote the struggling local tourism industry in the country.
“So the co-operation between Roderick Bay Beach Bungalow and Pelican Shipping Ltd started back in 2022 which we are working together to offer holiday packages to our customers.
“So since I have the transportation and Patrick has the tourism site we are collaborating to offer the best holiday package to our customers and therefore promoting the struggling local tourism industry.” Mr Romeo said.
Its the fourth time they are doing organising holiday trips to Roderick Bay and this is also the first time that we have the most visitors coming, so trust me we are getting better each time.” Mr Romeo added.
Most of the passengers were foreign nationals working in the country, mostly expatriates and Chinese, Philippines and Indians and a good number of local visitors also joined the trip.
Mr Sara said the aim of having this tourism site setup on their island is to have more visitors coming to their island because not many of his people have the opportunity to travel often to Honiara to make money in terms of marketing and selling their produce.
He said so the setup helped bring visitors to purchase the markets the local vendors sell on the island.
“This site has helped my people to earn money by having their markets sold to visitors, so we all have our fair share, job opportunity, we work together and it unites us.”
Mr Romeo said that they have lowered their ticket price so that everyone can afford the trip.
A ticket costs $500 covered for the entire package covering sea-fare, breakfast and lunch.
“Going forward we have more Pelican trips coming and we are planning on expanding our holiday trips to other tourism destinations in the country like Tavainipupu, Double Island, Maravagi Resort and other tourism destinations across our islands,” Mr Romeo said.
Mr Sara and Mr Romeo are calling on the national government through the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) to help local tourism operators operating in the country to advance their operations.
Mr Sara said they want the government to help construct a proper wharf for its operations because currently they do not have one.
“For safety reasons and convenience of our visitors we want the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to help us build a proper wharf so that we can offer the best service to our visitors.
“As you can see if we have these important facilities in place we will have more people both international and local visitors interested to visit us.” Mr Sara said.
By IAN LADDS OSO
Solomon Star, Honiara
