Faith in the power of people and technology. Insights from a kiwi tourism leader.

by René de Monchy, Chief Executive, Tourism New Zealand

It’s interesting looking behind you at the pictures [on your office walls] of penguins and natural landscapes and thinking we are so reliant on natural capital as our tourism story aren't we?  

Absolutely. That is always at the core, and one of New Zealand's magic things is the beauty of the landscape, and the tremendous variety that's quite accessible and close by.  That is a differentiator between us and a competitor like Canada, which also has beautiful landscapes, but you've got to travel further to see the variety, whereas here you can see the some of the images behind me in an hour or two’s distance of each other.

So, we are super reliant on tourism. It is a key part of our economy.  How do we balance the need for growth with the need to preserve the assets that the tourists are actually coming here to see?

As we look forward, we've been asking ourselves that question as well. How do you grow tourism, grow it well, grow it sustainably, grow it with social licence?
There is a significant opportunity for New Zealand to really focus on being a year round destination.  We're very reliant on the three summer months. And so the challenge with that is that you get lots of tourism offerings that are well utilised in the summer and underutilised for the other nine months of the year to varying degrees.  The opportunity for us to actually grow without needing to build any real significant infrastructure is quite a sustainable growth opportunity.

Some of the core offerings that we have in New Zealand are best at different times of the year.  To give you an example, if you want to go whale watching in Kaikoura, the best time of year to do that is June and July.  That is the most beautiful time to visit and to see the whales.  So there's lots of opportunities for us to actually go at what is the best time to engage with nature and see nature.

What was the key thing that came out of TRENZ [the trade show and industry gathering held in May]?  Was there any discussion about nature as a tourism asset in those conversations that were happening at that conference?

Yeah, absolutely. Look in every conversation because again, the core offer of New Zealand and what people come for is the beauty of the nature and the outdoors and the variety of it.  So there isn't a conversation about tourism and travel and the visitor economy that doesn't have a component about nature and sustainability as part of it.

And it's accelerating. If you're a business now and you don't have some sort of sustainability plan or at least risk assessment, then you're living in the dark ages. I haven't spoken to any business leaders or any businesses that don't have this as a topic.

I think what you also see is an acceleration of consumers expectations, right?  The expectation of consumers is to know what your sustainability plan is.

And then bluntly, the businesses that are doing that well can also turn that into a positive economic story.  If they can charge more as a consequence, if they can enable people to donate to causes, whatever the outcome might be, you can see businesses that are really doing well and also doing the right thing at the same time.

You know you see the growth of ecotourism, ecolodges all those sorts of activities that they also can charge a premium for those activities.

Do you have any personal kind of drivers when it comes to nature, climate, the environment?  What is it that that motivates you?

We do live in a magical part of the world, but I think the risk of that is that we can be a bit naive because we're a bit further away. We're lucky to live in a small, thinly populated group of islands where the wind blows quite strongly.  And because we're so lucky to live in this part of the world, we need to be quite honest with that. I think it’s important that we don't go ‘well, everything seems fine here’. I think that's probably what motivates me is actually being honest and open about the challenges we face.

Final question then, what does an ideal world look like?  If we get this right around how we manage nature, climate and environment, where would you like us to be? 

I do believe in the power of travel and people being connected. Coming out of COVID, travel intent is probably higher than it was pre COVID and I believe that is because people have seen what happens when you get locked up and you can't travel. The world becomes smaller, people become smaller minded, you become less open.
If people travelled more, the world would be a better place in my view.

Listening to a few speakers at TRENZ over the last week, what I see is because there's so much focus on sustainability and the environment and how we do things better I have a great hope, not a naive hope, but a great hope in the power of people and the power of technology and people finding solutions to some of these hugely challenging problems.

Look at aviation. That's always a big topic for travel. The technology does not currently exist.  SAFs [Sustainable Aviation Fuel] is the best we've got to make an improvement. But there are so many people working on this key challenge.  I'm pretty excited about what is going to be invented and what the next couple of decades holds in terms of some of that technology.