NZ’s surprising new tourism hotspot booming

New Plymouth: Taranaki is enjoying a tourism boom after the travel bible Lonely Planet named it the second best region in the world to visit in 2017.

But while visitor numbers are up and they’re spending more, not everyone is cashing in just yet and it appears some tourists, at least, didn’t get the memo.

It’s hard to argue with the numbers. Tourism contributed NZ$362 million (FJ$521.27) to the Taranaki economy in the year to October - up 12 per cent on 2016. Overall guest nights have risen 4.5 per cent to 644,000 and international guest nights are up more than 25 per cent to 115,000.

By comparison international guest nights for all of New Zealand are up only 5.5 per cent. But for Rob Needs, who runs the Taranaki Mountain Shuttle and co-owns Top Guides, that hasn’t translated into a windfall just yet.

“So at the moment I guess the immediate reward is in my transport company. The guiding company is developing and that won’t see significant growth until we reach a kind of tipping point which I think probably is one to two summers away.”

Mr Needs helped to get the Pouakai Crossing on the Lonely Planet’s Taranaki must-do list, but was still working 30 hours a week at his day job. He said he was prepared to play a long game.

Chaddy’s Charters runs tours of the Ngamotu Marine Reserve in a historic English lifeboat and is a Taranaki institution. It also got the Lonely Planet nod.

Dave “Chaddy” Chadfield said the weather ruined his 2017 and passenger numbers were down by half. But he was optimistic about 2018.