Bicester worth copying
the same. You do not have to be big to play in the international tourism space. Bicester has a population of fewer than 35,000.
New Zealand is a beautiful country with plenty of tourists.
But it is the services part of the tourist experience the country needs to work on.
Good accommodation, food and entertainment are the bare minimum. Short of creating another Bicester through luxury brands, are there ways to complement the natural beauty by improving services?
How about more touristfriendly signs in the cities?
How about city shops staying open a little longer?
Chinese visitors are the big spenders. They spent more than US$260 billion ($371.60b) abroad in 2016, twice the amount spent by US tourists and one-fifth of all global spending by international visitors. But they don’t spend much in New Zealand, for sure.
International tertiary education is in a slightly different situation.
Despite the rising standards of Chinese universities, Chinese students continue to be keen on studying in Western universities or Asian universities that adopt Western-style education.
But they often spend significantly more than tourists, and therefore subject their spending to tighter scrutiny.
This translates to a higher risk-return scenario for the tertiary education service sector.
In 2017, more than 600,000 Chinese headed to overseas universities. If each of these students pays US$40,000 per year on fees, this results in an outflow from China of US$24b.
That doesn’t even take into account the cost of living and other associated costs.
We also need to consider the bigger picture: making international students feel at home will boost the international reputation of our tertiary institutions, and likewise New Zealand as a country for all international students. It is the services that we offer in conjunction with tourism and education that will make a serious difference to our international customers.
Siah Hwee Ang holds the BNZ Chair in Business in Asia and is the director of the Southeast Asia Centre of Asia-Pacific Excellence at Victoria University of Wellington.