First steps towards a new tourist landscape
Freedom campers. The very term sends lots of people into an apoplectic rage. In 2019 an estimated 245,000 of them hit scenic spots around the country. It’s easy to forget but in the couple of years leading up to Covid there was a subset of freedom campers – small and mostly foreigners, it is suspected, but no-one really knows – leaving rubbish and other waste on all sorts of public land around the country. The public outrage was palpable and real.
The Labour Government has been moving on doing something about this since it was first elected in 2017 and now – after a bit of Covid delay and a dearth of international tourists has taken pressure off the system – new Tourism Minister Stuart Nash has released a discussion paper on what the new rules should be around freedom camping.
There are four proposals in the document: Making it mandatory for freedom camping to be done in a certified self-contained vehicle; make it mandatory for freedom campers to stay in a vehicle that is self-contained, unless staying at a site with toilet facilities; tougher fines for rule breaches, and tougher rules around what a self-contained campervan is.
Nash has made several public statements on this: he thinks freedom camping should be allowed only in vehicles with a plumbed toilet that can handle three days’ worth of waste.
He thinks the days of seeing ropey old vans travelling around the country with a mattress, a cooktop – and perhaps a bucket with some cling film over it – must stop. He doesn’t think you should be able to just pitch a tent on a bit of public land near a road with no toilet facilities.
That said, he was open to amending his view – but not substantially changing it – should there be legitimate public concern or an outcry.
He is also at pains to point out that proper campervans will not be caught out by the new rules.
For Nash this is a basic issue of fairness, brand and ultimately social licence: public support for high levels of tourism will not be sustained if the public thinks some tourists are despoiling our land.
He reckons that, behind gun reform after the March 15, 2019, shootings, it is an issue over which the Government has received the most emails and negative feedback.
It is also important to note, Nash reckons, that New Zealand has plenty of camping grounds, both privately run and under Department of Conservation management.
The tourism sector is understandably buzzing about the possibility of Australian tourists coming here from Monday week. But the effect will be uneven. For some rural centres it could mean they start to lose domestic tourists to Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. For others, it will mean more tourism from Australia, which means bigger-spending guests and more of them. The effect will be lumpy.
Tourism NZ currently estimates there is a $12.9 billion gap expected from the loss of international visitors since Covid began. Australians spent $2.7b in New Zealand in 2019. Thanks to the opening of the bubble, Tourism NZ expects that figure to be about $1b by the end of the year.
The other key figure that Tourism NZ has is that 89 per cent of New Zealanders don’t want the border reopened until the situation is safe. That figure in itself is no surprise – the difference is always over people’s definition of safe.
The government agency will also be launching soon a new marketing campaign to attract more Australian visitors.
The reopening of the border is the first step towards the Government’s new approach to tourism. Nash, who before becoming an MP spent some time working in international marketing, wants to try to change the often derogatory way that some people refer to tourism jobs: low value, serving flat whites, changing beds and so on.
Since being given the portfolio, he has been keen to think about ways that New Zealand can capitalise on its 100% Pure campaign – one that has only been bolstered by the Government’s handling of Covid.
Part of that is trying to drive a cultural change around how people think about workers in hospitality: not as wage slaves but as the first line of hosts welcoming tourists – whether they are foreign or domestic.
At the same time he wants to strip out the very cheap bottom rung of tourists, mostly young, who arrive, rent or buy a cheap car and proceed to freedom camp. His argument is that there are plenty of cheap camping grounds that fit within backpackers’ budgets while not despoiling the environment.
This all falls into a much larger conversation about what and how much tourism there should be in New Zealand as the world gets vaccinated and gets back to something approaching normal in the next 12-14 months.
For a long time there has been academic and sectoral work done on how much and what sort of tourism New Zealand should be trying to attract.
But that is ultimately a difficult conversation: when government campaigns are about attracting as many tourists as possible, what can the other strategy be? To attract higher-value tourists? We already try to do that, as do most other countries in the world. And what policies can you practically implement to get quality over quantity?
These are all probably good problems for the minister to have, particularly when in charge of an international tourist sector that will need rebuilding from the ground up.
One thing is for sure. Stuart Nash will probably have a lot more to do – and have a much bigger hand in shaping New Zealand’s future economic prosperity – than just about any previous tourism minister.
A freedom camper crackdown is probably a good start.
What policies can you practically implement to get quality over quantity?