National’s plan to save tourism jobs
National has set itself the ambitious goal of saving every tourism job through policies designed to offset the devastation caused by Covid-19.
The undertaking was given by National leader Judith Collins and Rotorua MP and tourism spokesman Todd Mcclay at a tourism policy announcement in Rotorua yesterday.
National will set up an ‘‘infrastructure bank’’ to help local councils build facilities needed to relieve pressure from tourism, and it will provide more financial assistance to cover the fixed costs of struggling tourism businesses.
The ‘‘bank’’ would source finance for projects in regional areas, and sit alongside an already announced $100 million tourism accelerator fund to help businesses with new projects and innovation.
A new tourism 2025 fund would use unallocated money from the current tourism infrastructure fund, the international visitor levy, and anything left over from Labour’s strategic assets protection programme (Stapp).
The process for distributing $270m in Stapp funding has been strongly criticised by the industry as unfair and lacking in transparency after 130 recipients were chosen from 308 applicants.
The decision to give AJ Hackett Bungy $10.2m in grants and loans was controversial and Collins described it as ‘‘unusual.’’
‘‘I don’t think it was a great decision given that what I heard from tourism operators in Queenstown that the owners of that particular business are some of the wealthiest people around.
‘‘I’d like to be able to claw stuff back, it would be good to be able to but I don’t think it’s possible.’’
Mcclay said National would seek advice from industry experts over allocation of funding, and described Labour’s efforts as ‘‘a patchwork response’’.
‘‘We want to make sure the criteria is open and transparent so every tourism-related business in New Zealand that thinks they have a need will have an opportunity to apply to that fund.
‘‘We want every business in tourism to be a winner, not just the ones (Tourism Minister) Kelvin Davis thinks are worth supporting.’’
Davis has repeatedly said it was not possible to save every tourism job, but Mcclay said that was National’s aim.
‘‘Every single tourism business in New Zealand was viable before Covid. Over the next five years we want to get the visitor numbers back, so they remain viable and that those 400,000 people that relied on tourism to provide for their families still have a job and a future.’’
Other policy initiatives included a 2021 New Zealand tourism festival to encourage domestic business, and the possibility of cruise ships operating ‘‘Kiwis only’’ trips around New Zealand over the summer. Collins said National would work with local government, iwi, and the tourism sector to speed up decision-making, cut out bureaucracy and improve the collection of tourism data.