A forty-five minute boat ride out of the Kokopo beachfront will take you to the magnificent Kabakon Resort, situated on the Karawara Island of Duke of York, East New Britain.
During the colonial era, the island was known as the nude beach. Today, the site is being further developed to attract local tourists. It is a perfect place for family, schools, sporting team picnics or company functions.
Kabakon Resort gives its guests additional adventures to other island beaches at Duke of York.
Visitors to the island can treat themselves to a variety of activities such as diving, trekking, canoeing, kayaking and snorkeling. Fish caught by the locals is cooked according to the preference of the visitors. This is a complimentary service provided by the locals.
Kabakon Resort is a form of community-based project. In 2015, members of a provincial online forum, known as the East New Britain Today, realised the need to provide an avenue for continuous economical support for locals of the Karawara ward and embarked on marketing the product locally.
“The idea was to create an avenue for local tourists to visit the island as a means to empower the people economically,” says ENBT.
Discussions in this forum resulted in the group’s visit to the island and thereafter, the creation of a partnership that was aimed at further involving people through creation of jobs such as boat skippers, tour guides as well as casual workers on the island. The management of this project is now left to the ward member.
The locals at Karawara have partnered with other wantoks in the likes of prominent East New Briton, Apisai Jubilee, who provides his boat for hire for a tour to the island.
Under the current arrangement with Bala Tours, a tours agency in the province, a group of ten people pays a total fee of K500. This equates to K50 per person. This only caters for the boat trip and picnic. To overnight, an additional K60 per person is charged for each night.
In the meantime, there also exists an arrangement between the Kokopo Beach Bungalow and the people of the Karawara ward, who have been very supportive of the Kabakon Resort initiative.
After ENBP was given the title as the tourism hub, the provincial tourism office in partnership with ENBT decided to take a different approach in promoting tourism in the province. Tourism in the province is now aimed at marketing the products locally. This is to maintain local tourist engagement every week when the resort does not have international tourists.
The ENB tourism master plan has recognised various tourism zones in the province. These zones are called ‘clusters’, where collective tourism products are promoted.
The islands in the province are identified as one cluster. Duke of York Islands is one of the islands. The master plan was conceived in order to sell ENBP’s tourism market to the world as well as enable ease of access to funding from world donors.
These funds would assist in upgrades of old sites, development of new sites and infrastructure upgrades to propel ENBP as a major tourist destination and maintain the province’s status as a tourism hub.
Currently, there are other resorts being set up on the island of Duke of York. Two resorts that are being widely promoted are Kabakon Resort and Kabakai Hideaway Island Resort. This is because these two establishments already have the facilities to accommodate tourists.
Karawara Island is also set to host the shooting of an episode of the international TV program called Survivor.
(Pictures by Rachel Apisai)
