Nash’s crass tourism bash
TALKING POLITICS
Last week, Tourism Minister Stuart Nash raised a few eyebrows overseas (and some hackles here at home) by saying that New Zealand isn’t interested in mass tourism anymore, and also isn’t keen on attracting budget visitors who ‘‘travel around our country on $10 a day eating two-minute noodles.’’
Apparently, our tourism marketing would be aiming to attract big spending tourists in future.
‘‘In terms of targeting our marketing spin,’’ Nash explained, ‘‘it is unashamedly going to be at … high-quality tourists.’’
Nash’s comments were a political gift to an Opposition adept on painting the Ardern government as liberal elitists out of touch with ordinary people, and with the needs of small firms doing it tough. At this point in the pandemic, it seems unlikely that our prime tourism spots are going to be overcrowded again, thereby putting unsustainable
OPINION:
pressure on our tourism infrastructure. Not for the foreseeable, anyway.
For the next few years, the fear of catching Covid in foreign places could possibly deter many people from taking holidays far away from home. New Zealand’s distance from major tourism hubs also risks being a deterrent on climate change grounds as well.
In that respect, Nash’s plan to encourage foreign ‘‘big spenders’’ to fly in for brief stays seemed to be utterly tone deaf to the climate change implications. Besides, the marketing focus that Nash outlined would channel many of the economic benefits of tourism into a limited number of high end resorts – some of which are owned by investors offshore, including the occasional Russian oligarch.
As a consequence, the main economic gains from tourism would no longer be spread through the regions, which is where those despised budget travellers spend their money in any number of retail outlets.
Many budget travellers also pick fruit, work on farms and wait on tables in our cafes and restaurants.
Arguably, the cumulative spend by budget tourists on food, public transport, rental vans and homestays may be comparable to what those high rollers would spend on their fine dining, top dollar accommodation and hunting excursions.
There’s a wider problem. Nash’s tourism plans seemed to be at odds with the egalitarian way most New Zealanders regard the natural environment. Most of us don’t believe that we personally own our natural heritage, and can’t quite believe our luck in having such beauty so close at hand.
This feeds into an impulse to share that good fortune with people from other places and yes, to make some money on the side from hosting them.
But what most of us really don’t want to do is to turn this country’s natural wonders into playthings reserved for the richest people on the planet, while we labour away in their service – cooking their meals, making their beds, and being their faithful Sherpas into the outback.
By contrast, most budget travellers seem more like the kind of people we can stand alongside, as we marvel together at the stunning landscapes in our own backyard.
Stuart Nash might be well advised to take note. Basically, most New Zealanders would prefer to be the joint caretakers of our natural heritage, and not the gamekeepers for the master at the lodge.