Hobbiton’s unexpected journey
For a tourist company that relies on the international market, Hobbiton has had to make some tough choices to get through.
Hobbiton had taken a hit. Within a few months, 280 staff became 26, visitors plummeted from 650,000 per year to 70,000 and
80 per cent of its target market disappeared overnight.
It was ‘‘without a doubt the hardest thing I’ve been through in business’’ says one of the top bosses at the country’s third largest tourist destination, Hobbiton Movie Set.
While Peter Jackson’s Lord of
the Rings films had lured millions of tourist to the bucolic hills near Matamata, Covid-19 was a like a spell from Gandalf that had made them all but disappear overnight.
Last summer business was booming and continuing to grow year-on-year – Hobbiton even had to turn away a few people at the door.
The boom had started well before that.
After the Hobbiton Movie Set was rebuilt in 2009 on the Alexander family farm, the business went from 17 staff and between 13,000 to
25,000 visitors each year to almost 300 staff, around 3000 visitors each day in summer and an average of 60 tours per day.
From there the car park remained full and the rolling hills of Hinuera were often dotted with earth-green tour buses as camera-toting tourists weaved in and out Middle-earth.
In January 2019, Hobbiton applied to change its resource consent on the number of visitors it caters for annually, from
300,000 to 650,000.
Now, a minimum of five tours and 200 visitors on average experience The Shire each day. Where once tourists filed through like an orc army on the march, there’s now more than enough room to swing a dwarf.
Hobbiton’s Deputy Chief Executive Shayne Forrest is something of a Samwise Gamgee in his sunny assessment of how Kiwis can finally come and see one of their biggest attractions.
‘‘There’s no better time than right now.’’
It wasn’t the closure of New Zealand borders on March 20 or the nationwide lockdown five days later that first indicated change was coming.
It was in February when the Government enforced entry restrictions and a
14-day isolation protocol that Forrest and other operators had to make some ‘‘pretty huge adjustments.’’
Forrest said watching the whole business shut up shop and close the doors was ‘‘pretty shattering.
‘‘It was without a doubt the hardest thing I’ve been through in business. I think I’ve learnt more in the past six months than I have in the previous eight years that I’ve been here.’’
However, closing the business for good was never an option.
‘‘We didn’t want to, it was pretty unknown what it was going to look like, but we knew we could continue operating,’’ Forrest said. Unlike Tolkien’s creation, New Zealand’s Hobbiton wasn’t an isolated village.
The symbiotic relationship with nearby Matamata’s main street of eateries and accommodation and the flow of spending visitors along the tourist trail to Rotorua and beyond was a consideration.
‘‘We want to continue supporting the community . . . we want people to keep visiting us and then that flow-on effect through to the community, bars, shops, restaurants, cafes can only improve.
‘‘It’s good for us and good for the town.’’
Hobbiton is estimated to bring in $78m to the Matamata-Piako district annually. It’s a 15-minute drive to nearby Matamata, population 8000. Once known largely as an agricultural hub, tourism made Hobbiton a major economic plank.
So when Matamata was home to one of the country’s biggest Covid-19 clusters in the peak of the Covid-19 outbreak the district had the biggest drop in visitor spend – 20 per cent – within the Waikato .
Forrest said it was clear there would be some lasting effects on the tourism industry.
It was hard for those made redundant and for those who stayed with the business as well, he said.
After the company shed staff earlier this year, Hobbiton chief executive and co-founder, Russell Alexander set out to find the 254 staff a job elsewhere.
He jumped in his car and shot across the hill to Tauranga and started talking to those in the horticulture industry, said Forrest.
‘‘We had a whole bunch of really good workers that we hoped to get back into employment.
‘‘He [Alexander] went over and wanted to make it as easy as possible for our people to get work.
‘‘We’ve worked hard for years to make a really cool family culture in Hobbiton. To turn around and let those people go was pretty tough.’’
But like a lamp struck in the Mines of Moria, there was a glimmer of recovery.
Hobbiton reopened to tour groups on May 30 and continued to stay open for seven days a week. It opened with a minimum of three tours a day and with the help of the domestic market, that number increased to five.
Kiwis make up 20 per cent of Hobbiton’s market and Forrest said it meant a lot to him and his team when they got out and travelled. Hobbiton is well on its way to hitting this year’s target of 70,000 visitors
Forrest acknowledges it’s a long way from the 650,000 they saw in 2019.
‘‘If you look at it year-on-year, you’d cry. But we’re thrilled with that number of people, it’s more than what we were expecting.’’
Much like other New Zealand tourism businesses, it’s ‘‘relying on Kiwis this summer.’’
Hobbiton’s ability to drag them inland, away from the beach is still uncertain.
‘‘Summer is always our busy time of year and Kiwis traditionally have gone and based their holidays around water, so we are going into an unknown time.
‘‘But from what they’ve told us they are going to experience Hobbiton and other tourism attractions, and we’re staffing up accordingly.’’
The tourist hub has started rehiring employees and now has a pool of 60 staff members.
It has also reintroduced some flagship tours, including the Evening Banquet tour in The Green Dragon Inn and most recently the Second Breakfast tour held in the company’s latest addition, The Millhouse.
How the journey began
Hobbiton’s journey started in September 1998 when Sir Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema discovered the Alexanders’ 1250 acre sheep and beef farm, just outside of Matamata, during an aerial search for suitable filming sites.
Within the next few months construction began. The New Zealand Army sent in its earth moving machinery and 39 hobbit holes – this has since increased to 44 – were created using timber, ply and polystyrene.
While the ‘party tree’ around which hobbits celebrated in the films was original to the farm, the iconic oak tree that overlooks Bag End was cut down and transported in from Matamata. Around 376,000 artificial leaves were brought in from Taiwan and individually wired onto the tree by Weta Workshop. Jackson later ordered the leaves be re-painted and re-wired by a team of university students. They have since been replaced with permanent ones.
One year after the farm was discovered filming began and continued over three months. Once finished, little trace of the Hobbits’ vivid culture was left, just hillsides faced with crumbling ply houses. After a rebuild the movie set business opened in December 2002.
The further rebuilding of some of the set took place in 2009 for
The Hobbit Trilogy took two years. By October 2011 filming commenced. It took 12 days.