New Zealand needs a national tourism taskforce

Monday, 18 June 2018

Tourists photographing the view in the Eglinton Valley on the Milford road.

OPINION: A national tourism taskforce is needed. Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC) is asking the Government to establish a working group to plan for a genuinely sustainable tourism industry that ensures international visitors' enjoyment and New Zealanders' goodwill.

That positive way ahead is possible – tourism is intrinsically best when community and environment are in good heart – but things could as easily get out of hand. Warnings include ever-further industry expansion into beautiful untamed places, ratepayers' discontent at their towns' reorientation around visitors, and widespread traffic-and-toilets woes.

The daily crush of tourists at Thailand's Maya Bay, made famous by the movie 'The Beach', has been halted by a temporary closure to allow the environment to recover.

They're red flags, symptoms, and there's little to stop them or other industry-related issues becoming full-blown problems. International examples should be noted well. In the last year, Thailand's Maya Bay and the Philippines' Boracay have seen closures and Barcelona residents have marched in outrage because of what amount to visitor plagues.

Freshly alive to the charms of tourism planning, authorities in those locations have put remedies in place; Aotearoa must not experience the lows that prompted them. Poster-nation for tourism done well, Bhutan, brandishing its high-value-low-impact motto, shows strategy can be gold.

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*](https://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/business/104740355/tourists-happy-to-be-taxed-25-when-entering-new-zealand) Government pockets $2.6b a year from international tourists.

* Tourism tax may never be perfect, but something must be done to protect the industry

* New Zealand tourism on the cheap - the backlash against budget visitors**

Planning for our own industry should be properly integrated, driven by central, regional, and local governments – their mandates are plain – and with NGOs and commercial groups around the table.

There should be clear linkage between, for example, the way Tourism New Zealand markets what our wild public lands can offer, and the exquisitudes of recreational track-building and Lakes District carparking.

A national tourism strategy is about more than well-organised layers of harm-mitigation, however.

Underlying necessary bureaucracy and practicalities are some basics that should be accepted unblinkingly. For example, that places can be full. Waiting lists can be okay; indeed, scarcity is advantage. And that supply-side, rather than demand-side, focus is essential to Kiwi self-determination.

Grounding our strategy should be our deep values. While it's important to know what we don't want from international tourism, it's essential we understand and articulate what we do expect from it, the principles driving those expectations, and that those principles are worth having.

For FMC, bedrock is kaitiakitanga of our dear land, our whenua and wairua, where Kiwis and our stories are built and anchored. Tourism planning should enshrine care for Aotearoa's vitality and sheer loveliness. If the industry disappeared tomorrow – vanquished by geopolitics or tectonics, for example – these should remain, uncompromised.

And, because it's our home – international tourists have their own roots in other places – our people and egalitarian standards should prevail. In our households, sovereignty, order, and trust matter. The same applies to our nationhood. It's about the mana of hosting, sure-footed in our place and culture.

Prioritising land and community is right; they're elemental. What's more, unabating demand for Aotearoa's beautiful wildness means New Zealand can afford to dictate terms. And then there is the deep worth – to ourselves and our visitors – of being authentic.

New Zealand tourism and its social license to operate can and should be calibrated to our whenua and tangata.

So when the industry tells the world about our place, it should be saying that our place means the world to us. That our natural and cultural histories are not for fast-food-style consumption. That simple trails and huts are – and will be – nature's only concessions in our backcountry. That use of public transport and recognised accommodation is recommended – strongly. It should be saying: real sustainability; respect.

From industry expos' messaging, to our air- and sea-ports' infrastructure planning, to how DOC's star attractions are promoted (or not), to how tourism GST is re-cycled to photogenic towns' sewers-to-municipal-plantings needs, there need to be direct lines of sight to the things that matter most.

Little is new under the sun. Internationally, tourism has pressured nature and neighbourhoods since its earliest times. There's lessons for us in other places' experiences, but Aotearoa must develop its own plan. Growing up but not yet set in its ways, our industry needs that direction now.

This winter's tourism maintenance, capacity-development, and new projects should be the last to occur without a national strategy's guidance. It's time to get a taskforce in place. FMC will be involved to represent our wild lands, New Zealanders' love for those places, and the Kiwi sense of self that is grounded there.

Jan Finlayson is vice-president of Federated Mountain Clubs, the national association of climbing and tramping clubs. It is a voluntary body representing more than 80 clubs, 20,000 members, and 300,000 people recreating annually in New Zealand's backcountry.