Whatever happened to the great tourism reset?
Throughout the pandemic border shutdown, critics and the government warned that tourism must not return to business as usual. But has anything really changed? Nikki Macdonald investigates.
On March 16, 2022, a beaming Jacinda Ardern announced Tourism Aotearoa was open for business. ‘‘We’re ready to welcome the world back,’’ the then-prime minister declared.
It was a very different message to the one delivered a year earlier, by then-Tourism Minister Stuart Nash, who used the border shutdown to demand a rethink of the 2019 tourist onslaught that left overrun communities, conservationists and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment pleading ‘‘Enough is enough’’.
‘‘We cannot return to business as usual,’’ Nash warned in March 2021.
But the world was listening to Ardern. Already, overseas visitor arrivals have bounced back to two-thirds of their pre-pandemic heights.
In Queenstown, the hordes boarding and disembarking international flights have exceeded 2018-19 summer numbers every month since September.
So has anything actually changed to prevent a return to the destructive over-tourism of old?
Words, words, words, but where’s the action?
Last November, former Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) Dr Morgan Williams and his wife, Pam, visited Franz Josef. They walked the track to view the glacier terminal, chatting to about 40 people along the way. All but three were international visitors, drawn here by the unique landscape and ecology of what Williams calls the ‘‘Gondwanan Arc’’. And all were travelling slow, spending at least three weeks in the country.
That gave Williams hope that maybe the decades-old tourism mantra of ‘‘value over volume’’ was finally sticking. But then earlier this year, the couple toured Central Otago and the West Coast.
‘‘The mid-sized buses are back on the road, roaring along and stopping at really beautiful places. They get out, do a 20-minute walk, then go again. Now I don’t know what that model is, but it looks suspiciously like the old one.’’
In November 1997, Williams wrote a report about managing the environmental effects of tourism.
When current PCE Simon Upton wrote his 2019 report Pristine, Popular . . . Imperilled? he was struck by how little had changed since Williams’ analysis, despite two decades of ‘‘soothing words about sustainability’’.
There have been still more words since.
The 2019 Aotearoa Government Tourism Strategy acknowledged rampaging visitor growth had outstripped our capacity to deal with it, overstressing infrastructure and the fragile natural environment tourists come to see.
The strategy promised annual report-backs on progress. They never happened. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment says that was due to Covid disruption.
The ministry did find time, though, to start two completely new reviews.
The Tourism Futures Taskforce’s interim report, in December 2020, called for a major system change, including a new tourism law, The New Zealand Visitors Act. That never happened.
The taskforce promised to deliver final recommendations and steps for implementation in April 2021. That never happened either. MBIE says Nash ‘‘deemed’’ the interim report to be final.
Instead, the government launched a new $10m Tourism Industry Transformation Plan (ITP), which has reported on tourism workforce issues and is now looking at how to protect the environment.
New Tourism Minister Peeni Henare says that process is industry-centred, so will definitely result in action.
‘‘When you’ve got that wider buy-in, the expectation is that they will continue to deliver on it.’’
By the numbers
Rosco Gaudin’s kayak business never got out of third gear this summer. He was eight guides down, with illness and injury.
The 30-year Milford Sound veteran is no longer making plans based on 2018-19 numbers, when visitor numbers exceeded the supposed park limit of 4000 on 30 days.
‘‘We’re not modelling our business on that any more, that’s not sustainable for us. But Milford will come back. It’s coming back now, strong.’’
In March, passengers on Milford Sound/Piopiotahi day cruises were already back to 75% of the 2018-19 peak.
Across the divide, numbers are also flooding back to Aoraki Mt Cook, where visitor numbers almost doubled between 2012-13
and 2017-18.
Like many tourism operators, Charlie Hobbs has had to completely transform his business to cope with dire staff shortages. His Old Mountaineers Cafe, which used to do full a-lacarte table service with 13 staff, now has two staff serving meals in biodegradable containers.
With his heli-hiking and glacier kayaking businesses, he’s had to reduce trip numbers to cope.
But what hasn’t changed is the surge of people arriving in the tiny alpine village to walk the Hooker Valley Track – one of several free ‘‘best day walks’’ promoted nationally by the Conservation Department.
It started with independent Kiwi travellers, then Aussies and Kiwis returning home, then international independent travellers. Then China reopened, and there was an influx of Chinese visitors.
‘‘It’s a walk I wouldn’t do because, oh my god, there’s so many people. It’s an amazing, beautiful valley, of the most scenic views in the world. But it’s just a massive amount of people.’’
Talk of a tourism transformation was ‘‘balderdash’’, Hobbs says. ‘‘The floodgates are open. I don’t see any way of controlling it . . . Pretty soon it will be back to normal – too many tourists. And that in itself is a real problem.’’
Paying their way
There is one thing that might help, Hobbs says. ‘‘They’re getting it totally for free. I personally think we should be charging
overseas visitors an entry fee. It doesn’t have to be big . . . If somebody wants to come in and walk our amazing tracks, which have been upkept by DOC, there’s a cost to that.’’
Charging $5-$10 would at least help fund maintenance of the car park, toilets and tracks day visitors use, Hobbs says.
The fact tourists don’t cover the cost of their impact comes up again and again in reports. Ratepayers and taxpayers largely pay the $150m-a-year cost of visitor infrastructure. And user charges cover only about a quarter of the maintenance cost of DOC’s 900 huts and 300 campsites. Even its Great Walks aren’t fully self-sustaining.
‘‘The Government cannot support all aspects of improvement without receiving more revenue in return – the books need to be balanced. Visitors do need to pay more,’’ concluded the Tourism Futures Taskforce.
‘‘The current funding model for tourism is financially and socially unsustainable,’’ says Nash’s proposal to increase the $35 International Visitor Levy (IVL) that foreign tourists (excluding Aussies) pay at the border.
Introduced in July 2019, the IVL was one of few concrete management measures in among the decades of soothing words. Another was DOC’s decision to charge international trampers more than Kiwis on its Great Walks.
But it’s not enough. At $35, the IVL was expected to raise $80m a year. International tourists cost DOC about $96m a year in maintenance, plus the $150m a year cost to local councils. The numbers simply don’t add up, the IVL increase proposal notes.
‘‘The environmental costs of tourism are largely met through taxpayers and ratepayers, or ultimately go unaddressed, leading to the degradation of New Zealand’s natural capital.’’
Facing pandemic-reduced revenue and massive rebuild costs for track and hut storm damage, DOC has a $300m maintenance backlog.
Williams says increasing the IVL is a no-brainer. Look at the Galapagos Islands, where they charge US$100 to visit. But we should also change how the fee is framed.
‘‘It’s not about a charge for doing something like walking a track. It’s really a contribution to a Gondwana protection system.’’
Nash’s IVL proposal suggested an increase to $100, $150 or $200, which would have raised up to $444m a year.
In his March 2021 press release, Nash said pricing the full cost of tourism into the visitor experience was one of his four key principles for transforming the sector. But it clearly was not a priority for the Government, which rejected it.
That was a red flag for Environmental Defence Society policy director Raewyn Peart, who has researched ways tourism could contribute to the ‘‘critically underfunded’’ conservation estate.
‘‘That is pretty disappointing. It shows there is perhaps not the appetite to change the model.’’
Henare has no plans to refloat Nash’s proposal. The IVL ‘‘was a levy for its time’’ and he has asked officials to review it. Is he considering ditching it? ‘‘No, I’m just making sure it’s fit for purpose.’’
Another option to cover the cost of tourism on conservation land would be to charge a national park entry fee for international visitors. That’s been rejected by previous governments, as legislation currently protects free access, so it would need a law change.
Back at Aoraki, Hobbs reckons that’s a copout. ‘‘We’re pretty good at changing laws, so why don’t they just change that one?’’
He doesn’t favour increasing the IVL, as that would go into a national fund, rather than staying local.
Queenstown Lakes mayor Glyn Lewers also isn’t a fan of increasing the border levy, because there’s no guarantee that money will go to where it’s needed.
Instead, he wants a regional visitor levy, or bed tax. But that needs government approval and Henare has ruled out any new levies before the election. Without it, Queenstown would face a $200m infrastructure funding hole over 10 years, Lewers says.
‘‘That shortfall would have to be made up by rates or by central government. It’s as simple as that. It has to come from somewhere.’’
Former Otago University tourism professor James Higham says it’s ‘‘absolutely insane’’ for Kiwis to be subsidising international tourists to do our Great Walks. But he wants a clear national funding system.
‘‘We have to make sure that tourism pays its way . . . But I don’t think we want . . . a hotchpotch of local or regional initiatives being put in place, to address a problem that is systemic.’’
Even Tourism Industry Aotearoa agrees tourism needs a better funding mechanism, and how that happens will be part of the industry’s just-announced strategy reset.
But chief executive Rebecca Ingram won’t say whether the industry supports a higher border levy, departure taxes, bed taxes or national park entry charges.
Managing numbers
Every conversation about managing tourism’s impacts snags on one thorny question – do we need fewer tourists?
‘‘We don’t need mass tourism, because it kind of deflates the value of the place,’’ says Hobbs.
The tourism industry argues it’s about spreading the load, not reducing overall numbers. As one person put it, it’s like the Covid plan to ‘‘flatten the curve’’, to reduce pressure-points.
But Milford Sound dolphins don’t suffer less disturbance if the 4000 people gawping at them are spread across the day, instead of arriving all at once. In fact, concentrated crowds might be preferable, as they allow more undisturbed time for normal dolphin behaviour.
Ngāi Tahu Tourism, for example, has reduced its Shotover Jet operating hours post-Covid. ‘‘That means less impact on the river, and less carbon impact,’’ says its general manager of tourism, Jolanda Cave.
‘‘We took the opportunity to consider who we want to be, and what we want to deliver for our manuhiri (visitors), beyond shortterm goals and chasing numbers.’’
Lewers talks about finding an ‘‘optimum yield’’ of tourist, taking into account the limits of infrastructure, the natural environment and the need for tourism income.
But how do you control to that number? ‘‘That’s the process we’re going to have to figure out.’’
You could start by giving DOC tools to manage visitors, says Peart, of the Environmental Defence Society.
When the Conservation and National Parks acts were conceived, tourism was barely a thing. So the agency overseeing a third of the country is now left struggling to manage the nation’s biggest export earner, with tools designed to manage Kiwis out tramping or hunting.
DOC should be able to decide the maximum number an area can cope with, then find ways to cap that, Peart says. That might be a booking system, or a park-and-ride to stagger arrival times.
Henare has asked Conservation Minister Willow-Jean Prime to consider ways to better manage tourism on conservation land. He says communities tell him we do need fewer tourists, at least in the worst pressure areas.
‘‘Take where I come from, in the Bay of Islands, where nearly 100 cruise ships visited every summer. That clearly was unsustainable, and the community made that clear.’’
Transformation or tinkering?
Asked whether talk of a tourism transformation has triggered any real action, Higham says, ‘‘Yes, and no’’.
In the five years he’s co-run the Otago tourism policy school, there’s been a building consensus that tourism must change.
‘‘I’m hugely encouraged and optimistic that Covid has presented a turning point.’’
But he also acknowledges that little looks different on the ground. Visitor numbers are rebounding and previously over-run communities still have few tools to control crowds.
The problem is that the puzzle of transforming tourism comprises so many different pieces – the thousands of small businesses making up the tourism industry, the councils providing tourism infrastructure, DOC, and national roading and infrastructure players.
Higham argues our tourism policy settings are broken, and we need a dedicated Tourism Commission to slot together all those disparate pieces.
‘‘I liken tourism to an oceangoing ship – turning it around is not easy, particularly when you’re also subject to global tourism forces.
’’We can carry on talking about these things until we’re blue in the face, but until we have some sort of national tourism organisation, I don’t think much is going to change.’’
Henare says the tourism reset is happening, but it’s industry-driven and the Government’s role is to support that.
Ingram also argues progress has been made. The 30-odd new regional destination management plans are ‘‘really important’’ and should help communities decide what they want tourism to look like, and how they get there.
And legislation is going through Parliament, to require freedom campers to have self-contained vans. That, says Ingram, will ensure people camp responsibly.
Peart also hopes the new destination management plans will make a difference, if they take a strategic look at how to get tourists to stay longer in an area, spend more money, do a range of activities and have less impact.
But at the gateway to New Zealand’s most-visited national park, Abel Tasman, Johny O’Donnell (Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri, Ngāpuhi) is underwhelmed.
He points out that, while the Government funded the development of destination management plans, there’s no extra money for their implementation. (The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment says they should be integrated into local government budget and funding processes.)
As chairman of a new Mārahau collective of tourism operators trying to reduce their carbon emissions and channel tourist funds back into conservation and communities, O’Donnell feels the Government’s promises have proved largely empty.
‘‘The narrative that we heard in 2020, when Covid hit, felt like transformation of the sector and that definitely hasn’t occurred. And I think that’s a real shame, because my experience is you’ve got an industry who is up for that leadership, who wants to be a part of that transformation and work together on it, and the ambition just hasn’t followed from the government’s perspective.’’
Piopiotahi – a test case
When you ask what true tourism transformation might look like, the vision for Milford Sound/ Piopiotahi is often cited as the great green hope.
The Milford Opportunities Project (MOP) master plan includes many elements commentators call for at a national level – an electric bus park-and-ride to spread visitors across the day and reduce the journey’s carbon footprint; an entry charge of $50-$150 to contribute to conservation costs; ways for Ngāi Tahu to tell the taonga’s cultural story; banning cruise ships and closing the airstrip to reduce noise and air pollution.
‘‘This is our chance to do tourism differently,’’ says MOP programme director Chris Goddard. ‘‘But it’s also really important to the place. It’s one of our premium visitor attractions, part of our largest national park. To do our best work is absolutely important.’’
But this has already been a 7-year process, and it’s still in feasibility testing. The final reportback is 30 June 2024.
As Milford veteran Gaudin puts it, there’s ‘‘a lot of talkie, and not a lot of do-y’’.
But Gaudin, who says Milford has become a s...hole, hopes the process will, eventually, create a place he’ll be proud to return to as an old man. ‘‘A place that is managed, not mis-managed.’’
Higham agrees it’s time to turn talk into action. ‘‘There is a risk of growing cynicism around the future of tourism, after so much has been spoken about transformation, if very little is seen to have changed by the public . . .
‘‘I don’t think the chance has been squandered, but we have to act quickly, because there is urgency, and it will take some really concentrated, concerted and co-ordinated effort to redirect tourism.’’