How will Rotorua survive?
Rotorua faces a calamitous drop in revenue from international visitors because of Covid-19. How will the Sulphur City cope? Tony Wall and Benn Bathgate report.
Coachloads of tourists would normally be pulling up each day to Rotorua Rafting’s base in peaceful Okere Falls, getting ready for a trip down the
Kaituna River, including the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world.
But the Covid-19 lockdown brought the award-winning business to a grinding halt, forcing its young owner Sam Sutton to think outside the box for ways to keep his team of about 14 employed.
Then he hit on an idea. What if they started a whole new business, completely unrelated to rafting or tourism, making use of their rural backgrounds and building skills?
Something that could keep them working during the various levels of lockdown, top up their Government wage subsidy and provide a worthwhile and sustainable product?
He decided to launch a landscaping business focusing on ‘‘edible backyards’’, including vertical planter boxes that can be fitted to suburban fences.
Sutton, 30, and his guides will design and make the planters at the rafting base, while the office workers will focus on marketing.
They hope to provide clients with seedlings as well.
‘‘It will be a co-operative between our staff,’’ Sutton says.
‘‘For us as a business, it’s beneficial to keep our staff on and then to kind of share the love – it’s something we can do together and keep the camaraderie that we had. We’re going to see a skills shortage if we don’t hold on to our staff – they’re the only asset within our business that’s irreplaceable. We’re not planning on getting rich from it, but we’re just planning on not going backwards too far.’’
It’s radical ideas like these that will be needed if Rotorua’s tourist attractions – many of them aimed at international tourists – are to survive the pandemic.
The once-bustling tourist mecca has transformed since the Government shut down the borders in March.
The car park at Te Puia, a
Ma¯ ori culture and geothermal attraction and one of the country’s biggest tourist drawcards, is usually a sea of coaches, campervans and cars. Typically it attracted tens of thousands of visitors each month, and that was just the Chinese market.
As a visual representation of the economic havoc the virus has caused, the now empty sea of parking spaces is hard to beat. It’s a sight mirrored across the city and surrounds, as the likes of the historic Whakarewarewa Ma¯ ori Village and Skyline Skyride close their doors.
Nga¯ i Tahu Tourism has indefinitely closed its familyfriendly Rainbow Springs wildlife and nature park and its Agrodome farm experience and is talking about laying off 300 workers nationwide.
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment figures for the year to January show visitors pumped $845 million into Rotorua’s economy and the city had a goal of increasing that to $1 billion. It was a target backed by then-Prime Minister John Key in 2016 as viable, and by Rotorua’s Mayor Steve Chadwick. At least until Covid19 changed everything.
‘‘Who knows,’’ is Chadwick’s response when asked whether the $1b target can ever be reached. She describes the hit on Rotorua as ‘‘an enormous blow’’ and says the tourism sector is ‘‘on life support’’.
‘‘We haven’t had anyone coming, [tourism] was absolutely cut off.’’
About 22 per cent of Rotorua’s workforce works directly in the tourist trade, a figure that rises to 33 per cent when tourismdependent hospitality ventures are included, Chadwick says.
There will be job losses, business closures and no overseas tourism market for at least 18 months, Chadwick believes, but she isn’t without optimism.
She points out that Rotorua built its tourism trade in the wake of another disaster, the 1886 Tarawera eruption that destroyed the Pink and White Terraces – New Zealand’s first international visitor draw. What was done once, can be done again, she believes.
New Zealanders spend $10b a year on overseas travel – ‘‘we want some of that’’.
There are reasons for optimism. Of the $845m annual tourist spend, domestic visitors accounted for $499m. Their spending was also up last year by
5.4 per cent, against a 0.9 per cent rise in the international spend.
Chadwick says Rotorua Lakes Council is open to changes to its Annual Plan to boost domestic tourism.
Destination Rotorua, a council-controlled economic development and tourism agency, is working with businesses to offer assistance ranging from redeploying staff into other jobs, accessing central Government relief funds and pushing for domestic visitors.
‘‘They’re planning for this weird new future, and they know we have to adapt fast,’’ Chadwick says.
Destination Rotorua chief executive Michelle Templer says while tourism has been impacted hugely by the pandemic, the region has other strong industries, such as forestry, manufacturing and agriculture.
It’s vital that big projects that were planned before the pandemic continue, Templer says.
‘‘We’re working hard with council, the private sector and Te Arawa to make sure the projects that were under way are funded and continue to move forward so the city is ready to come out of this.’’
But uncertainty remains. Neville King, CEO of a Ma¯ ori land incorporation behind plans for an $80m Ma¯ ori-themed hotel development in downtown Rotorua, is unsure if it will go ahead. ‘‘We’re still having that conversation. A lot of our development was premised on a strong tourism market,’’ King says.
He believes tourism may resume in Rotorua next year, international visitors a year later.
They are still ‘‘cracking on with the development’’, but they’re also paying close attention to guidance from the New Zealand Tourism Board, and various Government ministries. ‘‘The uncertainty... It’s a huge risk. The world’s changed.’’
Blair Millar is chief executive of Whakarewarewa Living Ma¯ ori
Village, one of the country’s oldest tourism businesses – ‘‘our guiding legacy goes back to the Pink and White Terraces’’.
He, too, is unsure what the future will look like.
‘‘Whakarewarewa village has a number of families living in there – what does that look like for the business moving into level three and two? A lot of the residents in there are elderly – how do we function in that environment and look after their health and safety?’’
Millar says 85 per cent of the village’s visitors are from overseas, and it will now have to switch to the domestic market. ‘‘I’d like to think New Zealanders can get to see a lot of their country . . . but we’re all going to be fighting and competing for that domestic dollar – I just don’t think it’s going to be there to the extent it would have been if it had been an open market.’’
Sutton, of Rotorua Rafting, agrees. When his rafting operation is allowed to open up again, hopefully at level two, business will likely be intermittent – local visitors mainly at weekends.
Sutton says 70 per cent of his customers were from overseas – voting Rotorua Rafting the number one experience in New Zealand on Trip Advisor last year – but it should be able to pivot to the domestic market easier than those offering cultural shows.
‘‘I’m expecting we’ll see a 50 per cent increase in our domestic market over the year coming up, but that’s going to be very intermittent compared to international tourism, which is awesome for us Monday to Friday.
‘‘Most people in Rotorua are accepting the fact it’s going to be a tough couple of years.’’
He’s hopeful the landscaping business will take off. ‘‘Our core focus will be how to utilise areas of your garden to become productive so people are able to be self-sufficient. Never in the world have people been more aware or focused on becoming self-sustaining.’’