Vanuatu Tourism Video

Everybody on board: Vanuatu goods to be delivered directly to the tourist destinations

Used in skin care and cosmetic care it is mainly used for sale to foreigners. After the hurricane of category 5 in March 2015, the tourism sector has sustained around 40 percent of the country's population. IFC is the World Bank's privately owned branch that promotes investments in less developed nations.

The company has joined forces with Australia and New Zealand to bring commodities such as coffee, hot cakes, chocolates and arts and crafts to wider market. IFC' s Dina Nicholas says the aim of the scheme is to stimulate the tourism sector and distribute its benefits to more distant parts of the land - areas that are not often visited by tourism - by developing the delivery pipeline and assisting regional manufacturers to come into better contact with global tourism.

"When you think about it, how can we get tourism, which is one of the biggest industries in Vanuatu, to arrive on the Outlying Isles? Mrs Nicholas says IFC has entered into an arrangement with P&O to ship some of its vessels with locally sourced wares.

"Keeping your product on board will solve these three issues of accessibility, isolation and authenticity," she says. A group of girls takes part in a handicraft workshops in Port Vila to cope with the anticipated growing demands and learn how to make goods from regional sources. It is hoping that the investments in domestic manufacturing will have another advantage - the withdrawal of some domestic vendors from the sales of seemingly home-made mementos.

However, Tess Newton Cain, head of TCN Pacific Consulting and a long-time Vanuatu inhabitant, is more sceptical. "I' m always worried that it's not backed up by a real case that shows that there is a real need, that it can be bought at the right prices, that it' can make the right amount of cash, that it is of good enough qualitiy, that it' s what they want to buy and that it is what the markets are like," she says.

At the end of the day, we need to buy goods that the public wants on the boat. "The writer traveled to Vanuatu with the support of the International Finance Corporation.