The importance of the occasion to Fiji – which derives 40 per cent of its GDP from its visitor economy – was evident in the number of politicians that attended the opening event, which was also attended by micenet.
Several former prime ministers and several current government ministers, including the acting prime minister and the deputy prime minister were at the opening, with the acting PM, Filimoni Vosarogo, addressing the gathering.
In his speech, Vosarogo called the opening of the resort “a statement of confidence in Fiji’s economy and its future, a symbol of our resilience as a nation, a reminder that Fiji’s tourism continues to move forward with intensity and resurgence”.
“Every investment in tourism extends far beyond this resort boundary,” he said.
“It fuels our economy, strengthens our communities and supports the lives of thousands of Fijians.
“Behind every arrival, every visitor, is a flow of benefits. Benefits that reach taxi drivers around the country, tour guides, market vendors, farmers, entertainers, handicraft makers and thousands of workers across many sectors.
“When nearly one million people visit our shores, the positive impact is felt in every town, every village and indeed in every settlement. The Crowne Plaza Fiji Nadi Bay Resort and Spa is already part of this growth story.
“This redevelopment has created hundreds of construction jobs and will continue to employ many more Fijians as the hotel expands.”
Since opening under the Crowne Plaza brand in early 2024 just 15 minutes from the airport in Nadi, the resort has undergone a multi-million-dollar renovation which has seen the addition of well over one hundred rooms and multiple food and beverage outlets.
Crowne Plaza Fiji now offers 324 one- and two-bedroom accommodation options – the second largest room inventory in Fiji – seven swimming pools, eight restaurants and bars and a café, with a 10th F&B outlet to come in the form of a pan-Asian restaurant. A new premium spa, a large retail offering, a new gym and a new kids club are also in the works.
The just-opened standalone convention centre, offering 920m2 of pillarless space, massively increases the property’s appeal for business events. The new space joins an existing 493m2 ballroom and a couple of board rooms.
With the convention centre in play, the resort’s general manager, Sudhir Yadav, says the team is looking to grow the business events proportion of its business mix from under 20 per cent to around 35 per cent.
Ten international events have already been locked in for the new venue between now and the end of 2026, with groups coming from Australia, New Zealand the US to meet at Crowne Plaza Fiji. The resort team are expecting the majority of events coming into the convention centre to be international, with an anticipated 60-40 split between international and domestic business events.
The largest event win to date is a spa conference with over 500 delegates that will be held at Crowne Plaza Fiji’s convention centre in the back half of 2026, giving the forthcoming spa offering a hard deadline for completion. Yadav says the spa will be finished by the end of June 2026.
Prior to its reinvention as a Crowne Plaza, the new-build hotel operated briefly as a Pullman, before closing during the pandemic and being sold to its current owner, Jay Singh, a native Fijian, who built a sizeable hotel portfolio in the USA before looking to invest back home. The Crowne Plaza is his first resort investment in Fiji.
Under Singh’s ownership, tens of millions of Fijian dollars have been poured into developing the resort’s offering. Alongside the significant increase in room inventory and the convention centre, the public spaces in the resort have received much attention and are where the property really excels.
During the extensive renovations, existing spaces were stripped back to their shells and new spaces have been built. The lobby has been spectacularly transformed, three swimming pools have been added and the creation of spaces like Urban Sugar, the hotel’s European style beach club, have yielded stunning spaces for leisure guests and business events alike. The attention to detail expended for the resort’s new venues is perhaps epitomised by their bathrooms: surprisingly grand spaces with huge wooden doors adding a sense of entrance even to a humble cubicle.
Also at the convention centre opening was Sam Davies, IHG’s director of operations for Australasia and the Pacific, who described the resort’s lawn areas as “actually magic” for events. He’s not overstating it.
Capable of hosting groups of up to 400 for dinner, the lawn sitting between the beach and the resort does have a magic to it as an evening event space – experienced by micenet on a famil earlier this year, as part of a much smaller group, with ample space for installations and a cultural performance.
The weekend’s convention centre opening also demonstrated the possibilities of a buyout of the resort – of which there has already been a few.
A cocktail reception in the new venue, complete with suspended human drink refillers, led to a secondary culinary experience in and around beach club Urban Sugar, with performances on the lawn and fireworks over the beach.
An afterparty followed in Latitude Bar and Lounge, another marvellously appointed space which is equally capable of being a quiet option for daytime corporate meetings or an evening drink and transforming into a nightclub style space.
As the first and largest premium resort offering in the largely underdeveloped Wailoaloa Beach, which boasts vast swathes of vacant land further down the beachfront, the Crowne Plaza Fiji’s debut is heralding something of a repositioning of the area.
“Wailoaloa is an upcoming destination. We’re calling it the new Denarau of Fiji,” says Yadav.
He believes there will be further development of the area – and there has already been another major hotel development announced, although construction has not started.
“As you have one successful resort in a place, the other investors see the potential of it,” says Yadav.
As for IHG more wholistically, there is a definite intention to grow their presence in Fiji, according to Davies.
“We’ve got a lot of active conversations at the moment, not just in this location, but across broader Fiji as well,” says Davies.
“Luxury and lifestyle plays really well into Fiji.
“Watch this space for more exciting announcements as we go forward.
“Whether it’s here in this destination along the beach…or more broadly, you’ll definitely see more IHG hotels coming to Fiji.”
