The Fijian Town That Visitors Don’t Want to Leave

High-profile foreigners, including motivational guru Tony Robbins, own resorts on the scenic (or high-end) harbor town of Savusavu. It's easy to see the allure.

By Tom Downey | Photographs by Melonie Ryan for The Wall Street Journal
Oct. 7, 2022
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Savusavu, on Fiji's second largest island, draws the yacht crowd, ambitious entrepreneurs and visitors who’d rather keep the place a tightly held secret.

Savusavu’s history is unique to Fiji. In the late 1800s, a group of Europeans settled here to run copra plantations. (Copra is a kind of dried coconut kernel used to produce coconut oil.)

The industry thrived for decades. But when new cooking oils came onto the market in the second half of the 20th century, it imploded. Nevertheless, the legacy of the copra business still defines the town.

Today, Savusavu’s protected port—conveniently positioned east of Australia and north of New Zealand—has made the town a favored stop for yachts crossing the Pacific.

Parcels of land in Savusavu are easier to subdivide and sell than in the rest of Fiji, which has just under 900,000 people spread across 110 permanently inhabited islands. The result has been an influx of expats, many of them buying up land to build houses and settling here for decades.

Two high-profile foreigners have resorts here: Motivational guru Tony Robbins bought Namale Resort in 1989 and French explorer Jacques Cousteau's son Jean-Michel opened an eponymous luxury dive resort a few years later.

Namale Resort & Spa.

Tony Robbins' Namale Resort & Spa has 19 villas.

Jean-Michel Cousteau Resort opened in the 1990s.

All of this activity has caused Savusavu to grow into much more than a pretty, remote beach town. Some locals, like Justin Hunter, left to study abroad and returned to launch businesses. He is co-founder of J.Hunter Pearls Fiji, a company known for its naturally cultivated colored pearls.

Justin and his wife, Leanne Hunter, look at some of the naturally colored pearls she incorporates in her jewelry designs.

But Savusavu is still small; about 7,000 people occupy the town and its environs. And its capacity for visitors is limited: The local airport can only accommodate small prop planes because its seaside runway is too short to land anything larger.

Surf ‘N’ Turf Restaurant in Savusavu.

Walu (Spanish mackerel) is served on sweet corn fritters at Surf 'N' Turf restaurant.

While Aussie and Kiwi families on school breaks gravitate to the big international chain hotels on Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu, Savusavu attracts a much larger percentage of Americans, often here on longer holidays.

Jean-Michel Cousteau Resort.

One of this region’s draws is that Savusavu’s properties are, so far, all smaller, independent hotels, not chains. “Savusavu feels untouched, probably how Hawaii felt a hundred years ago,” one vacationer from Florida said.

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Produced by Brian Patrick Byrne

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