Young travellers and the re-imagination of tourismYOURWORD

• Published date: 10 June 2021
• Publication title: Mountain Scene

The country left a lasting impression on my younger self. I’m sure many people can relate after travelling in their youth. Many young visitors to our shores share this same feeling about Aotearoa.

Tourism Minister Stuart Nash wants to ‘reset’ tourism, and I wholeheartedly agree. The next two years is the perfect time as the industry re-emerges from the ashes of Covid.

However, while our government has been big on visionary statements, we’re yet to see detail of what the future of tourism will look like, and how we get there.

So, let’s consider one possibility.

Pre-Covid, international tourism funnelled $17.5 billion of off-shore money into our economy, equivalent to $3400 per resident. This foreign currency gets distributed throughout our nation’s restaurants, cafes, and dairies, creating thousands of jobs and raising GST along the way.

There has been much said about ‘over-tourism’, and there are two similar but contrasting views on this: either our existing infrastructure is not adequate to handle the four million international visitors each year, or visitor numbers are too high for our infrastructure to cope.

What if we could increase tourist spend while decreasing visitor numbers?

Can we be smarter in the approach to future tourism? Tourism Industry Aotearoa boss Chris Roberts believes so, suggesting we need to change the narrative away from a ‘high-value’ toward a ‘high-quality’ tourist, stating: ‘‘A high-quality visitor could be someone who comes here outside of the peak period, visits regions who don’t see very many visitors, really is coming for an authentic experience, has a light carbon footprint.’’

Minister Nash has previously stated his view of ‘high value’ does not necessarily mean ‘high net worth’, so there is scope to consider what would represent high value or quality.

Surely an international tourist who spends $5000 over three months, getting much of this into regional areas in off-seasons, is more valuable than the tourist who arrives for 10 days in summer and spends $2000 ticking off a handful of typical destinations.

Spreading the volume of both visitors and spend more evenly throughout the country and seasons creates a more sustainable, higher-quality industry.

The coming 10 years in tourism is going to focus on sustainability, demanded by the eco-conscious, under-35 youth travel market.

This means not only managing visitor growth, but becoming more eco-friendly and creating systems whereby visitors to our shores can reduce their carbon...