Resort Support was established in 1998 to fill a need within the tourism industry for outsourced expertise in management consulting, marketing solutions and business development in the context of small medium tourism properties in Fiji.
The team at Resort Support have been operating many different tourism products throughout the Fiji and the South Pacific, from dive shops to cruise ships, from hotels to resorts and environmental management.
The two principals of Resort Support are Stuart Gow and Helen Sykes have over 45 years of tourism experience between them operating small-medium tourism products throughout the Caribbean, Central America and Fiji.
Stuart Gow
Stuart has been working in management of SME Tourism Products since 1993 in the Caribbean. His specialties are the operational and strategic planning and systems required to increase efficiency in tourism products.
Stuart Gow is a UK and Fiji citizen, having lived and worked in Fiji since 1996, initially to manage a dive resort on the island of Taveuni.
In 1998, he and his partner, Helen Sykes, moved to Suva and set up their own tourism consultancy business, Resort Support. In this capacity Stuart has offered management and development advice to some of the best tourism products in Fiji.
Specialising in Micro Small Medium Enterprise (SME) sized tourism businesses, his focus on developing and nurturing the SME’s through to the difficult small to medium sized growth period has been a specialty.
These longer term development projects have included two years as General Manager of Tui Tai Adventure Cruises, hired to redesign, rebuild and redevelop an adventure tourism product based in Savusavu and 5 years as Strategic Development Director of Matava Resort on Kadavu, during which time he redeveloped, rebuilt and relaunched the resort as Fiji’s Premier Eco Adventure Resort, winning multiple awards and putting Kadavu on the global map for eco-tourism.
Throughout this time Stuart has served on many Government Boards and Advisory Councils, and had a long standing position as Chairman of the national diving association Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association (FHTA) DiveComm for 15 years. Stuart is a long standing member and current President of Skål International Suva.
He also runs a small team of Fiji professionals in his online marketing business (The Army of Flying Monkeys) which works with Tourism SMEs to launch online and tap into the vibrant and readily available online booking travel agents (OTAs) to increase exposure and number of bookings.
He graduated from University of Glasgow in 1991 with a Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering, before embarking on a career in tourism and hospitality starting in the French Alps. In 2015 he completed his MBA at the University of the South Pacific winning the Gold Medal and Prize for the most outstanding Master of Business Administration graduate.
Stuart has been guest speaker and industry lecturer at the USP in the SHTM, and around Fiji at conferences, many times with a focus on eco-tourism in the SME Tourism Private Sector and it’s development and reality on the ground here in Fiji. Using his industry experience he brought ground truthed reality to the subjects using real life examples.
He maintains his love of adventure, nature and travel as much as possible. Learning to kite board a few years ago, he enjoys that sport as much as possible off Suva Point and Sandbank whenever the wind blows, which is his current ‘thing’!
Helen Sykes
Helen has been active in the tourism industry for over 25 years.
She brings her experience in the marine ecology and marine tourism system design and training to the table to complement the company’s drive to increase profits for our clients.
Why choose us?
Why us? Perfectly valid question and one we can hope to answer by saying you will gain real practical improvements and savings in the way you do business in the Fiji tourism industry.
We provide individually tailored, practical and effective solutions suitable for small-medium size businesses, and have developed a range of packages to suit your specific needs.
