Let’s realign our tourism strategy closer to our Kiwi values

Stephen England-Hall, Chief Executive, Tourism New Zealand

If you search for Rotorua Canopy Tours on Google Maps you will find it on Fairy Springs Road, with the same “Temporarily closed” note that appears next to all the tourism listings in the area.

However, while it may be closed right now, Rotorua Canopy Tours is an outstanding example of the future of tourism in New Zealand in a post COVID-19 world.

Rotorua Canopy Tours is an inspiring business. Eight years ago it took over a slice of pest-infested native forest that was really uncared for and turned it into one of the most sustainable and profitable businesses in the tourism industry by building a canopy height experience with zip lines, canopy bridges and walks in a native forest.

Their commitment was to restore the forest. As they’ve built that business, they’ve eradicated tens of thousands of pests and put in predator fencing. Over time as the business has grown, they have extended their canopy walks, extended the fencing, reclaimed more forest and eradicated more and more pests. The consequence of that is the bird life and the plant life that live in that part of the forest have been completely regenerated.

I look at that as being an example of entrepreneurial tourism with an environmental outcome. It hasn’t been destructive. It’s been incredibly complementary to each other. This is the kind of business that is going to be the future of the tourism industry. They’re never going to have thousands of customers a day, that’s not how they operate. But what you do have is a unique experience in a thousand-year-old native canopy that has a great environmental outcome and provides the platform for a great business.

I use the example of Rotorua Canopy Tours to illustrate a successful value over volume business model.

Tourism New Zealand has spent the last few years pivoting our global 100% Pure New Zealand campaign from showcasing our natural habitat to being about our people, what our values are and what we stand for. Our metrics reflect this - value per visitor, economic contribution, regional contribution, off seasonal productivity growth, and how New Zealanders feel about tourism.

Last year our Good Morning World campaign was the most successful brand-building campaign we’ve ever done for our country. It’s a message every morning from different people all over New Zealand saying come and experience this wonderful place I call home. We used no scripts, no actors; the only requirement is the person says ‘good morning world from…’ wherever they are. That campaign showcased our people. But behind that campaign was our strategy which is – Tourism New Zealand’s mission is to enrich New Zealand through tourism.

While that campaign is now behind us and we have, overnight and extraordinarily, switched off a $41 billion industry, domestic tourism and, eventually, international tourism will return.

Now is the time to make some fundamental changes to the way we think about tourism and our natural assets.

Contrary to public opinion, two thirds of our visitor economy is domestic and accounts for around $23bn of the industry. It’s really Kiwis who take the most advantage of our natural environment and most of the bookings in the huts are Kiwis, the ones going on the cycle trails are all Kiwis too. It’s good for New Zealanders, and if it’s good for us, it’s good for international visitors too.

At Tourism New Zealand we are thinking about how we move to a values-based tourism industry. One of the most exciting things about resetting the tourism economy post COVID-19 is pushing further on the path we were on, the values based model, where we determine the kinds of visitors we want and the kinds of experiences we want in the tourism industry and the kinds of outcomes we want for New Zealand and New Zealanders.

If we align those around our values (what we think is important) things like restoring of nature, being culturally inclusive, economically rewarding, then I think we’re going to set ourselves on a great path. At the heart of it we as a country need to decide if we want a million visitors in Milford Sound or a hundred thousand or just a thousand – how do we design a system that supports our values and is commercially sustainable.

The challenge for this reset is about getting the timing right so we can leverage it to do things in a smart restorative way. We are reimagining a sector, which is amazing, but there is a cold hard reality too. We are a tourism economy; we stopped being an agriculture industry 20 years ago. Taxes from tourism’s $41bn revenue paid for our new hospitals and schools and motorways.

Our thinking reflects the work and thinking of The Aotearoa Circle. Rob Fenwick got me hooked on the Circle and I’ve enjoyed becoming part of that team as it aligns quite closely with my personal vision for New Zealand. The Aotearoa Circle is about finding the path to incremental improvement.

Many tourism operators are already working to restore nature. Effectively the tourism industry is one of the most efficient ways to get an economic or social return on a natural capital that’s largely non-depleted.

If you think about other industries, you acquire natural capital and either dig a hole in it, set fire to it, or change it in some way. It’s quite material. Whereas much of the tourism product is simply visual consumption. Some is biking or walking in nature which has a comparatively low footprint – it doesn’t have no footprint, but it’s relatively small. Businesses that rely on natural capital for their proposition tend to take very good care of it, because it’s a core asset.

In terms of restoring nature, there have been conversations within the sector about how all visitors, domestic and international, can contribute to restoring nature.

Until COVID-19 the international visitor was paying a $35 levy, which was ultimately a contribution to conservation anyway. But there could be more meaningful ways for the in-bound visitor to have the option of choosing to have their levy applied to a specific environmental initiative.

If domestic tourism is going to be the lifeblood of the tourism sector for the next while – and no one knows how long that might be – how can we involve local visitors in conservation work that is effective but not a burden?

For the large numbers of unemployed (numbers of 200,000 have been cited) that will be the outcome of COVID-19, there are a number of simple shovel ready initiatives that I believe would benefit from additional labour. Whether it’s the eradication of wilding pines, acceleration of predator-free initiatives, riparian planting, or the billion trees programme to get some reforestation at scale going across parts of New Zealand, these all effectively restore nature at the base level.

Then there are added value initiatives such as completing the national cycle trail network, adding new day walks or multi-day hikes, and upgrading tracks in existing places of pressure. All those are labour intensive pieces of work. The Government wants these things done and New Zealanders wants these things done. And they have long term benefits to New Zealand.

How are we going to get this done? It comes down to coordination and action at scale. I think there is real opportunity post Covid-19 to get all the agencies working together, with organisation of the labour force by MBIE, and project management by DOC, or Ngā Haerenga The New Zealand Cycle Trail.

In terms of advancing The Aotearoa Circle’s work, restoring natural capital, Tourism New Zealand is thinking about how the tourism economy is governed, who we market to both domestically and internationally and how we do that. What constitutes tourism and recreation product and how might those things look in the future? How do we ensure that the system as a whole, both individual businesses and the public sector generates positive outcomes for the natural environment, the wellbeing of communities, the support and development of culture and of course the restoration of nature. If we think through that lens, then having the ability to reset a whole piece of the economy, without a doubt must have an opportunity to advance New Zealand’s mission.

May 3, 2020