We need to talk about tourism
I’ve spent most of my adult life as a public servant, something I never expected as a dyed-inthe-wool Aucklander, but something I am pretty proud of despite the often-misguided stereotypes.
The reality for a public servant, however, is that there is more systematic incentive to focus on risk than on opportunity. There are lots of reasons for that which could be the subject of many books, let alone columns.
It is the ‘‘risk’’ I was thinking about as I started seeing cruise ships sailing into Wellington Harbour – signalling the start of the busy tourist season.
To me, our tourism industry is like a goose that is metaphorically laying golden eggs for us. We know, of course, what happened to the goose in the fable – its owners got greedy and it was killed.
Tourism is now New Zealand’s largest source of foreign exchange earnings. Based on figures released last week, its direct contribution to GDP amounted to $14.7 billion, or 5.9 per cent of GDP. The industry employs 8.4 per cent of our workforce. International tourists generated $1.5 billion in GST revenue.
The great thing about tourism is it is people-intensive, which is good for employment. And not everyone requires a university degree, so even young Kiwi school leavers stand to benefit.
The stunning explosion of Asia’s middle-class, which is projected by the World Economic Forum to reach 1.75 billion by 2020, has contributed to a dramatic increase in the number of tourists coming from Asia.
Asia is now our second-highest source of tourists next to Oceania. Data shows 923,056 visitors arrived from Asia in 2017, almost doubling since 2013.
China is now our second-largest market after Australia. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment estimates that by
2023, close to a million Chinese will visit ‘Middle Earth’ annually.
Japanese visitor numbers recently returned to the
100,000-mark. Add to that India – our 11th-largest market with enormous growth potential. Southeast Asia is an emerging market with very positive outlook. These are ‘golden eggs’.
The trick, it seems to me, is how does New Zealand remain attractive as a tourist destination?
Let’s face it, tourists don’t come here for the big-city experience. They come here to get away from it. They go to the Church of the Good Shepherd at Lake Tekapo to be blinded by the serenity and beauty, not by a gleaming phalanx of white tour buses.
How we treat our tourists is critical, too.
Chinese travellers ranked having in-house Mandarin speaking staff as the most important area where improvements could be made.
Worryingly, only 17 per cent of New Zealand hotels have Mandarin-speaking staff. Chinese payment facilities such as Alipay rank second for consumers in importance, yet only 12 per cent of New Zealand hotels currently offer these facilities.
The Asia New Zealand Foundation published ‘Losing Momentum: School Leavers’ Asia Engagement’ earlier this year.
The study found 69 per cent of senior secondary students believe Asia is important to New Zealand’s future, but only 37 per cent believe Asia-related skills and knowledge will be important to their future work prospects.
This latter perception is odd and simply wrong, given all the data we have suggests having these skills will be a real advantage when they enter the workforce.
The research finds that although the number of secondary students studying Mandarin is growing, it is not keeping up with the decline in other languages. Overall, the number of secondary students learning Asian languages decreased from 39 per cent in 2012 to 34 per cent in 2016.
And it’s not just about language. Knowing the cultures of Asian tourists is important to help them have a much more memorable experience.
For example, most Chinese like to have a hot breakfast and they will go to a cafe´ if they know it has congee. A staple drink in North Asia is hot water. Go to most New Zealand cafes and ask for plain hot water and see the quizzical looks you get.
Just recently, and for the fifth consecutive year, New Zealand was voted as ‘the greatest country on earth’ in the Telegraph Travel Awards. Not bad, though how we rank in the South China Morning Post or Times of India is probably more important to us these days.
There is a risk in relying solely on our natural resources as our competitive selling point. There are things we control and can do to sustain this tourism success. And I know there are people thinking about this. Ensuring we have a workforce that is competent when it comes to Asian cultures and languages is one of them.
We need to have more skin in this tourism game, especially with regards to the booming inward Asian tourism markets, lest we unwittingly kill the ‘goose that lays the golden eggs’.
Tourists don't come here for the big-city experience. They come here to get away from it.
❚ Simon Draper is the executive director of the Asia New Zealand Foundation.