Managing to make a difference
QWhat jobs did you do before this one? I worked for Skyline Queenstown and NZSki in marketing, sales and business development roles.
QWhy did you choose this job? I saw the opportunity to utilise my skills and experience to make a difference and it also represented a great challenge to market and promote a fantastic but unknown region (at the time). It needed a story and identity created that reflected the essence of the Wanaka region and that translated across website, brochure, video and imagery to reach visitors who shared the underlying values that make our community special.
QHow did you get into it and when? It was an evolution of previous roles I’d held at Skyline and NZSki plus a return to a place I had spent many family holidays.
I started around 10 years ago.
QWhat qualifications and training did you need? I have university qualifications in marketing, business, tourism, accounting, recreation and conservation.
QWhat personal skills do you need? The ability to take a wide range of stakeholder views and navigate a clear path through differing expectations. And the ability to distill a large amount of complexity into simple and easy to understand messages and stories that resonate.
QAny physical requirements?
It is not particularly onerous.
QWhat do you do on a daily basis?
Our job as Lake Wanaka Tourism and my role as general manager of the organisation is to attract visitors to come to the Wanaka region. We do that in a range of different ways, from educating travel agents overseas to running websites and social media channels to working with anybody from Air New Zealand to Annabel Langbein, reaching their audiences
to encourage them to travel here. We also host journalists and travel agents to show them what we have to offer and for journalists to write stories about their experience here.
On a daily basis I do anything from creating strategic planning documents, proofing brochures, hosting travel agents, talking with organisations like council on how to
manage the pressures that tourism puts on our community and infrastructure.
QWhat is the most challenging aspect? Effecting change in the advocacy work we are increasing undertaking to organisations like council.
The growth hasn’t been just a linear path either. There was a lot of growth around 10 years ago but then the global financial crisis struck and things slowed down for a while, before picking up again around four or five years ago. Managing that change can be a challenge.
QAre there any particular health and safety issues? No.
QHow has the job changed since you started? My role has evolved considerably as the organisation has gained more resources and staff to undertake our activity. I’ve gone from being handson to taking more of an overview coordination role to ensure we are focusing our efforts and resources in the right place in the right way.
When I started it was me and one other plus our information centre staff, now we have six of us in the office plus the information centre is a substantially bigger operation. Visitors coming to New Zealand and visitors travelling around the country, they’ve both increased quite substantially. In 10 years, the spend by visitors has almost doubled. It was $580 million last year in the Wanaka region alone. That’s just under a 100% increase from when I started 10 years ago. We’ve grown at twice the New Zealand growth rate.
QWhat’s something people generally don’t know about the job? Given we are tasked with attracting visitors to the Wanaka region, most people would be unaware of the breadth and scale of the work we undertake as it all is targeted out of region.
QWhat are the highs of the job? Seeing what we do make a difference to the many small owneroperator businesses that we represent.
QWhere will you be 10 years from now? Looking for an opportunity to make a difference and be challenged in whatever role I might be in at the time.