Tourism ‘cheerleader’ announces $5m regional events fund
Friday, 22 March 2024
The Tourism Minister announced a $5m regional events fund, to encourage more visitors to areas outside of traditional tourist destinations.
He is considering reversing a $15m budget cut for Tourism NZ and increasing the International Visitor Levy.
The tourism industry will likely be a “big economic success story” in the next few years, he believes.
The tourism industry has a new $5 million regional events promotion fund and a cheerleader in parliament.
Speaking at the Otago University Tourism Policy School, in Queenstown, Tourism and Hospitality Minister Matt Doocey said the fund was promised by the National Party prior to last year’s election.
It aimed to encourage visitors to travel to areas outside of the tourism centres of Auckland, Hamilton Wellington, Queenstown and Christchurch, during off-peak seasons.
“It’s important that we showcase the whole country, rather than focus on a few tourist hotspots,” he said.
The sector was the country’s second biggest export earner and would likely be a “big economic success story” in the next few years.
However, the growth needed to come with social licence from communities with small ratepayer bases where infrastructure costs were high due to tourist numbers, he said.
“We need to do better and we need to take those communities with us on that journey,” he said.
It was up to individual regions to decide how many tourists they wanted to visit through regional tourism organisations and destination management plans, he said.
Doocey warned tourism operators that as minister he did not have a big budget, nor levers to affect change.
However, he could work with other ministers and and ensure tourism and hospitality had a voice around the cabinet table.
“It’s about being a cheerleader,” he said.
A key question was how local areas could potentially receive a revenue stream that will make tourism sustainable, he said.
There was almost universal consensus across the country that the issue needed to be resolved, he said.
The government had not made any decisions, he said.
“Nothing is off the table. I really want to hear what the sector is saying.”
He was less sure about funding destination management plans.
“We are open to continue talking about it. The fear is if you put money into a plan, it becomes about administration, not implementation,” he said.
One of his goals was to support the people who work in tourism and hospitality - about 20,000 people or up to 7% of the workforce.
He would work with the Minister of Education, industry and stakeholders on the implementation of the new NCEA tourism achievement standard, to highlight the value of tourism as a career.
He would be meeting with Stats NZ to look at reintroducing the monthly accommodation survey it dropped in 2019.
“I’ll be advocating about how they pick that work up because they fundamentally should be doing it,” he said.
The $35 International Visitor Levy (IVL) could be used to pay for the survey, or it could be used to reverse the previous government’s decision to cut Tourism New Zealand’s budget by $15 million each year.
“I think potentially that budget cut was wrong,” he said.
“Reducing their budget probably inhibits them from their potential budget of going out and doing what they do best, selling New Zealand.”
The IVL was due to be reviewed this year and he had been advised that it should increase to $43, to keep up with inflation.
He was taking advice on potential increases and considering how that might affect tourism numbers, he said.
Doocey also reiterated that he did not support proposals within the Milford Opportunities Project to ban fixed wing planes, and ban cruise ships.
“I want to back tourism. I don’t want to see the [project] as a subtext to de-growth. I think we can look at how it enables tourism,” he said.
A final report on the project would be presented to ministers later this year, he said.