Tourism industry demands better quality data and more research funding

Monday, 13 November 2017

The tourism industry wants better quality data on where both international and domestic visitors go and what they do.

The tourism industry is putting the acid on the Government over the lack research into the country's biggest export earner.

A Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) report released on Monday said there were significant gaps in data on domestic and regional tourism, and accurate up-to-date information was crucial for the sector to plan ahead.

It said there were problems with both the official Commercial Accommodation Monitor - which does not include Airbnb - and the International Visitor Survey (IVS), and users were increasingly turning to alternative private sector sources such as Qrious, which gathered data via cell phone tracking.

TIA Chief Executive Chris Roberts said there was no one central place to source data, and there was a need for consistent standards so the information could be used with confidence.

* MBIE under fire over accuracy of international visitor spending data

* International visitor spend hits plateau at $10.3b for the year

* Lack of critical visitor data puts the tourism industry at risk

* Tourism organisations using phone tracking information to gather event data**

According the TIA report the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) receives more than $3m a year to provide tourism data and forecasting.

The industry has raised concerns about the accuracy of official Government statistics from MBIE, particularly around tourism spending which had apparently dropped or remained static despite continued growth in visitor arrivals.

Those complaints recently led Statistics NZ to carry out 'internal analysis' to see if MBIE's use of the International Visitor Survey (IVS) could be improved.

Roberts said the new Tourism Insight Framework project aimed to ensure tourism businesses received good quality data they could use for future planning.

An example of that was the Bed and Breakfast Association which found that lack of information about international B&B visitors was hampering the ability of small owner operators to identify target markets.

The association also said failure to represent the B&B market in official statistics meant it was difficult to show its value to the visitor economy.

Other businesses interviewed for the TIA's Insight report said there was a lack of information about natural disasters and their impact on international visitor flows.

In the case of the Manawatu Gorge, businesses wanted to know how to approach their marketing if the gorge road closed indefinitely.

The report said tourism should be able to access the $1.4b Science and Innovation Fund for research to help support sustainable tourism development.

And it said the industry needed to come up with a way to contribute to research projects and data gathering.