Less can be more in tourism

Not too many years ago, a visitor stepping off a plane would soon be asked, ‘‘What do you think of New Zealand so far?’’ In future it might be, ‘‘So when are you leaving?’’ Our tourism industry is under pressure, and it is set to get worse. In 1990 about one million people visited our shores, spending $2.3 billion while here.

Over the past two decades the number of tourists has quadrupled, with revenue rising by 700 per cent, to more than $16b in 2018.

The industry to help them spend that money has also grown, if not necessarily the infrastructure to accommodate such numbers or to protect sufficiently what they came to see in the first place.

That infrastructure gap is one issue highlighted by Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton, in a report this week discussing the impacts of over-tourism in this country.

Upton predicts that the number of visitors could quadruple again over the next 30 years, to 13b. If that is the case, that would present quite a challenge.

The Government is addressing part of this by charging tourists a $35 levy, with proceeds going towards building infrastructure and better protecting the natural environment.

That should be relatively easy to fix, merely a matter of enough money being spent in the right places.

The bigger challenge is how to preserve something of the quiet, untouched, rough charm of our environment and way of life for a growing number of people in an authentic, sustainable way. And also, to not forget those who live here.

Other countries and places are doing this by spreading the love. Amsterdam, a city of 850,000 people bursting at the seams with 20 million visitors a year, is developing other sites nearby to steal the tourists’ eye.

New Zealand also has a great deal to offer beyond the usual tourist traps of Rotorua, Taupo¯ and Queenstown. A more holistic and mature marketing campaign could help relieve the burden in those areas while creating opportunities in other, lesser-known regions.

In Venice and on the Greek island of Santorini they are focusing on quality over quantity by banning cruise ships and setting limits for visitor numbers; Barcelona too is one of a number of popular European cities increasingly turning to regulation to better control both the number of tourists and their behaviour.

That’s being done not only to ease the burden of those tourists on sometimes historic sites and towns but also the way of life for people who live there.

That’s important if those cities and countries are to preserve not only the venues the tourists are there to see but also the social licence that supports the industry and the infrastructure that holds it up.

One advantage New Zealand has is time. It will be a while before we have to deal with the numbers visiting Venice, Amsterdam, Barcelona and other popular places. That gives us the opportunity to see what is done elsewhere and what might work here.

And it’s important to the industry, the national economy and to that sense of who we are that we get that right.

... how to preserve something of the quiet, untouched, rough charm of our environment.