Tourism makes sustainability a top priority as negative feedback grows

Tuesday, 14 May 2019

The Tiaki Promise gives domestic and international tourists a lesson in travel etiquette and pushes the sustainability message.

The tourism industry has promised to better manage future visitor growth in the face of Increasingly negative public feedback.

Sustainability has been listed as the top priority in a new set of goals released on Tuesday at the annual TRENZ industry trade show in Rotorua.

Tourism Industry Aotearoa chief executive (TIA) Chris Roberts said a recent Mood of the Nation survey had shown shown a steady slide in Kiwis' attitudes with a quarter feeling that more needed to be done to address the pressures caused by tourism, particularly in areas such as Queenstown where small resident populations felt swamped by visitors.

'We see it as possibly the biggest challenge at the moment so that's why we really need to focus on it.'

* Tourism launches charm offensive to keep Kiwis on-side

Cathedral Cove is a tourist magnet which is at times very crowded. Ways to better manage tourism are becoming more important as a growing the number of Kiwis are reportedly unhappy about pressures on infrastructure caused by international visitors.

* What is the carbon footprint of international tourism in NZ?

* 'The world's least unsustainable airline': Air New Zealand's climate dilemma**

'Up until 2015 we were using up spare capacity for the additional visitors that were coming, but that capacity has been used up in some places at certain times.'

When the Tourism 2025 plan was first launched five years ago, it aimed to boost annual tourism spend to $41 billion by 2025, and reaching that goal was now so close, Roberts said they had increased the target to $50b.

But now it was time to concentrate on management as much as money, and by 2025, the aim was to lift the proportion of New Zealanders happy with the level of tourism and supportive of more growth from 78 per cent to 90 per cent.

To achieve that the industry has come up with a list of 68 actions it will take.

They include getting all tourism businesses to take a sustainable approach to business, better better destination management, embracing Maori culture more, and engaging more with host communities.

To date more than 1000 tourism businesses have signed up to a sustainability commitment launched by TIA in 2017.

Roberts said it was important to show that the industry was doing its best to offset its carbon footprint, especially if the anti-travel movement grew in response to worries about the impact of climate change.

'There's a movement of people committed to not travelling, it's very small at the moment, and generally it is in the business rather than the leisure market, but it has the potential to get bigger.

'We can't do anything about how New Zealand is situated on the globe, but we have to show that New Zealand is doing everything within its control to be a good citizen with every tourism business doing its bit.'

Park and ride services are increasingly being used to avoid traffic chaos around popular tourist spots. The need for that mind of destination management is under the spotlight as visitor numbers continue to grow.

Auckland Airport has asked economist Shamubeel Eaqub to create sustainable tourism growth monitor that will measure the industry's impact on everything from rental housing affordability to air and water quality.

Eaqub said it was a difficult task because of significant gaps in data at regional levels, but it would hopefully provide some insight into where the upcoming pressure points could be.

Rotorua had a lot of visitors, but it had not suffered the same level of housing loss to Airbnb or experienced the massive labour shortages that Queenstown had, however that could change if growth outstripped infrastructure.

The perception that New Zealand was 'full up' was patently untrue, and there were definitely areas such as Whangarei and Gisborne that could handle a lot more visitors.

Eaqub said tourism generated a significant amount of tax revenue - nearly $3b in GST and more than $1b in taxes on wages - and there needed to be some hard conversations about the way that revenue was spent.

Part of the problem was that the places visited the most were sparsely populated and tax spending tended to be population-based.

'Local communities delivering the services don't get the benefit of that growth.

'When you have a centralised tax system you can very quickly go from tourism good, tourism good, tourism good, to tourism bad.

'If we are not able to keep the residents happy, we are not going to have the social licence to operate,' said Eaqub.

Stuff attended Trenz with assistance from Tourism Industry Aotearoa