Stop ripping off our tourists
We need to stop treating visitors as walking cash machines, writes Jill Worrall.
Afew weeks ago, a friend of mine from Europe ordered a one-shot Johnny Walker Red Label whisky in a Picton cafe. I ordered a coffee. In retrospect I wish I had ordered something stronger to counter my shock when my friend emerged from paying the bill to say his whisky had cost $25.
Now, it’s just possible that a mistake had been with the bill (he assured me the coffee was not included) but it did bring home how expensive New Zealand has become and not just if you’re reckless enough to order spirits in a bar.
Over the following two weeks of travelling around the country, including tourism hotspots such as Queenstown, I was taken aback by not just the prices but by the lapses in service and facilities that often accompanied them.
I travel overseas for up to six months every year taking tours in all corners of the world, and almost every year over the past few years I’ve been on a New Zealand road trip with overseas guests. I am pro-tourism, understand how important it is to our economy and how many people depend on it to earn a living. However, this last tour around the country has convinced me it’s time to discuss where our tourism industry is heading.
The obvious overcrowding of places such as Aoraki/Mt Cook and Queenstown is one concern – we do not seem to be coping well with increasing tourist numbers and if action is not taken soon we could kill the goose that lays the golden egg. In fact, in some places that goose is already looking sick.
Last year we hosted 3.7 million international visits, a 7 per cent increase on 2016. At the same time, average spending per person per visit was down by 4 per cent. I know it’s dangerous to make the link but after paying for overpriced food and drink around the South Island I can’t help wondering if the decreased spending is visitors voting with their wallet. Although I’m dead against tourists eating in our soup kitchens I can now almost see why they might.
I’ve travelled to plenty of places overseas that I wouldn’t hesitate to call a tourist trap but I rather naively thought that we were somehow better than that and were giving our visitors value for money. Now I’m not so sure. Let me give you some examples:
Food: A meal out in a seafood restaurant in Queenstown: Bistro style, no ambience to speak off, booth seating; three glasses of wine, two entrees (one scallop, one chowder), two mains (one mussels, one pasta with cockles) one shared dessert. Total bill $185 for two.
A truly awful frozen pizza in a cafe in a national park that cost nearly $30 where the manager holding the liquor licence was away from the premises, so people wanting a wine or a beer weren’t able to buy one.
Accommodation: If you are going to charge $250 a night for a cottage, albeit one in a stunning location, there are some essentials you need to provide – bedside lamps (guests shouldn’t have to resort to wearing a headtorch so that they can read in bed); wine glasses – we’re supposed to be proud of our wines – serving them in plastic is not the way to show this. Somewhere to hang towels.
Hospitality: If you have jumped on the Airbnb bandwagon then you need also to provide some basic hospitality if you’re on site when your guests arrive. Staying seated in your lounge playing on your laptop when you meet your guests for the first time is not how it’s done.
Wi-fi: My European friend decided not to buy a local sim card because he was sure New Zealand would have lots of free wi-fi available. I was embarrassed to discover that in many places we don’t. Popular cafes/restaurants in Picton, Wanaka and Queenstown and places en route either had none, or had systems so complicated that it was time to leave before one had worked out how to log on. And if you are charging premium rates for your accommodation, providing internet access is an essential.
Tourism numbers: It was Chinese New Year and peak holiday season but I was deeply disturbed by the scenes I saw at the Hooker Valley carpark in Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park. There were so many vehicles trying to park in what already seems the size of a supermarket carpark (strewn with rubbish) that vehicles were parked along both sides of the road for several hundred metres along the access road.
Attractions: Mt John Observatory now costs $8 per car to drive up to the lookout and cafe. The fee is to pay for road maintenance but not apparently to provide a large enough carpark at the top. Cars and campervans were parked on crazy angles beside the narrow road, including on bends on the road. What worried me even more is that the increase in foot traffic on the slopes around the cafe has made vegetation there almost nonexistent and the hillside has become bare. I love this place and was so proud of the entrepreneurial locals who started it, so I found this all very sad.
So, what are we doing to our country and our reputation? I am 100 per cent behind a tourist tax to help with essential improvements to our infrastructure but now I’ve also been made very aware that we need to offer our visitors value for money and not develop a reputation as a rip-off destination.
What about following the model of high-value, lower-impact, lower-volume tourism used by the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan? And high value does not mean high costs. We need to give people good value for the dollars they spend and I’m not sure we are doing that.
Do we want to get to a point of limiting visitor numbers as some destinations are considering? Do we want people leaving our shores, as my friend did, having thoroughly enjoyed his visit and the Kiwis he met but with the impression that New Zealand was more expensive than most European destinations.
There were, of course, shining examples of fantastic hospitality and wonderful guest facilities among the less than special. So, here’s a bouquet to the bed and breakfasts in which my guest stayed in Nelson and Timaru. He loved both places and not just because they were exceptionally comfortable but because the hosts understood the concept of hospitality.
We need to treat our tourists like guests, but equally make sure they treat our beautiful country with respect (other countries set guidelines for visitors, we shouldn’t be afraid to do so too). Give them value for money – don’t treat them like walking cash machines.