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The tourism industry is considering recruiting from outside of Fiji to overcome the ongoing brain drain challenge in the industry.

Minister for Tourism Viliame Gavoka confirms that losing tourism workers is becoming a real challenge.

Hundreds of tourism workers have departed for greener pastures since the reopening of borders, and Gavoka says that discussions continue on how to keep Fiji’s backbone cycling.

“We are looking at a number of options; training needs to be stepped up significantly to replace all those that we are losing, and we are also looking at some temporary measures on how to replace those people.”

Gavoka says the industry has had discussions with ambassadors overseas to try and recruit from where they are serving for specific fields in the tourism sector.

He says it is a huge challenge, especially now that tourism is becoming robust.

He admits that the industry is confident it will overcome this issue.