People this holiday season
speak that sometimes dominates Luxon’s dialogue ( although he is improving quickly).
Looking back on the transcript of our lunch interview, I catch only one obvious example, when she speaks about the importance of flexibility for staff.
“I’m interested in outputs,” she says, which strikes me as something Luxon might say.
ON THE recommendation of the waitress at Esther, we share several plates, including oysters, puff bread, taramasalata, duck pappardelle and lamb souvlaki.
“Other than offal, I’m good!” says Hurihanganui when I inquire of her taste buds.
Hurihanganui comes from midwestern America — Rockford, Illinois.
She and her two older brothers were raised in a very conservative environment.
“You get more reflective as you get older, I’ve realised.
“When I was growing up, my parents were very religious. We had a very strict upbringing that meant there were lots of things you couldn’t participate in. So as a kid growing up, I was different. You didn’t necessarily belong — there were things that you self- excluded from.”
She says the experience has helped her to understand other people’s positions.
“I think it brings an empathy because, at 11 and 12, kids are not particularly empathetic. When I was younger, I did not always feel fairly judged. It was great for nurturing discipline and independence but when you’re 12, you generally want to feel like you belong.”
From that, she says she has an understanding “or a curiosity, perhaps, to understand others before you judge”.
She once told BusinessDesk: “Empathy and popularity are two very, very different things. But you can bring empathy into any engagement. So even if you have a performance issue with someone, discussing it and understanding their perspective, their reality of how they’re thinking, generally allows you to have a more productive discussion, even if it’s a hard conversation.”
We discuss how she handles angry customers.
“The online environment is so nasty — I go back to my earlier comment about trying to understand where someone’s coming from; their back story.
“Sometimes I get some very aggressive emails or comments on LinkedIn posts. I would say nine times out of 10 — and I always feel very strongly about following up — when you reach out and engage, particularly if you’re talking and not via a keyboard, they’re nowhere near as aggressive.”
HURIHANGANUI CAME to New Zealand in 1989, as an 18- year- old. It was meant to be a short, six- week holiday, visiting a Rotorua friend who had been an exchange student in the US.
The planned holiday would be just the fillip ahead of her starting university in the US.
She never left.
“There’s definitely a connection with New Zealand — I really enjoyed it from the get- go.”
She met the dashing Steve Hurihanganui, 10 years her senior.
“Rotorua’s not very big. I’d seen him around town, a handsome young man. A week or so later I saw him again at a pub with some friends. He was there as well. We got to chatting and the rest is history, right?”
The couple have been an item ever since, with two boys, one 22, one 8. “My dad got his first passport to come and see his grandson.”
She could take or leave living in the US again but she misses her family.
“I miss my folks, I do miss popping over on Sunday for a meal or a cup of tea or taking them to the doctor. You miss the small things rather than the big things but we’ve done all right over the years.” Hurihanganui says she and her husband jokingly describe themselves as “active relaxers”.
“That usually means renovating, going hiking. We have a couple of dogs. A luxury is just to go for a twohour walk on a Saturday, not to be anywhere.”
In downtime, she’ll play Lego or SpiderMan with her young son; her older son is a building apprentice.
Her own work day starts early — up by 4.45am for exercise, and then in the car by 7am. She strives to be home for dinner, and to put her young son to bed. Then she’ll log back on for any additional or tidy- up work.
“What I don’t do is send emails after hours. I’ll get it done because it works with my family and my schedule, but I’ll delay sending it until 8 o’clock the next day. My experience is that no matter how often you say, ‘ I’m going to send you emails, but don’t feel like you have to respond to me,’ it doesn’t work.
“If people get an email at nine o’clock at night, they are going to feel compelled that they should reply.
“My team also knows that if they do hear from me at 9 o’clock, it’s because it’s something critical and important and urgent, rather than just normal.”
ONE OF the “outputs” she’s currently focused on is Auckland Airport’s massive redevelopment plans.
The Pullman hotel opened last week, and the first phase of a new $ 300m transport hub will open by the end of the first quarter of 2024, just after Hurihanganui marks her second anniversary as chief executive.
The first phase of the transport hub is an undercover pick- up and drop- off zone at the international terminal. It will also allow for P60 parking for people wanting to farewell friends and family.
Its opening lays the groundwork for enabling work to start for a new domestic terminal to be built in the next five years, attached to the international terminal.
International passengers, families, friends and other customers have been having to trek through makeshift, container- like pathways as the parking zone is being redeveloped — while it’s a burden, I ask her if people are forgiving, knowing that improvements are coming.
“There will be constant movements and things will open, things will close, things will be redirected,” she says.
The airport company has been doing a lot of “enabling” work until now.
“When you get into the construction proper, that’s going to be a really large footprint. Our focus is ensuring the customers are having an easy [ experience] — they know where to go, they know what to do.
“I think that you get a level of reprieve when people know that something better [ is on the way]. I think it gets even better when they see tangibles there.
“In the last 12 months, the public’s heard about ‘ it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming’. They see lots of hoardings but they are not seeing the results of it. Certainly in the next 12 months, stages will start to be finished.”
The new transport hub will offer a much better undercover experience for pick- ups and drop- offs.
“The roads are improving and people will start to see that — I think that gives us some credit in the bank, but that being said we have to deliver. We will always be judged on the last experience you have with us.
“You can have four great experiences — if your fifth experience is suboptimal, we’re going to be judged for that. We’re really conscious of that.”
SHE REJECTS criticism, mainly from airlines, that the airport is too focused on building retail experiences rather than its core aviation capabilities. Auckland, she says, has spent $ 1.5 billion on aeronautical investment in the past decade, and about $ 950m on non- aeronautical.
Regardless, she says, travellers want shopping experiences. Once they clear Customs and security, research shows, they finally relax — their holiday has started.
“Travellers want access to shopping as part of their experience. They want to be able to shop for handbags or go to a bar and have a glass of champagne.”
On Air New Zealand’s current CEO, Greg Foran, she says, “He’s a logicbased leader — I’m a logic- based leader.
“So actually, we work well in the view of saying, we’ve got problems to solve — let’s solve them.
“But again if it comes to pricing, we have perspectives — we may have to agree to disagree.”
She says the airport’s relationship with the airline is operationally strong — meaning, she says, that the day- today relationship is fine.
“. . . and then you have pricing,” she says.
“In my 23 years in the industry, every five years when there’s a pricesetting event, that tension comes to the fore.
“We have an effective operational relationship right now — but you need to be able to sometimes be comfortable holding some incongruence at the same time.”
As the world takes to the skies again, there is something like $ 700b worth of development under way at airports across the globe.
She cites airports such as Narita, in Japan, and Changi, in Singapore, as two of the best in the world.
The likes of biometrics are now helping passenger flows at airports in China. As long as privacy issues are well worked through, she sees biometrics playing a huge role in future.
AUCKLAND AIRPORT will be back to around 96 per cent of its pre- Covid capacity this summer.
Aside from the “revenge travel bubble”, Hurihanganui believes there’s another factor at play. People realising that life is short, and that despite tough economic times, they want to get to a Formula One race, or
I think we are fit for summer, but we won’t be taking our eyes off the ball, I can tell you that.
Carrie Hurihanganui
He’s a logicbased leader — I’m a logicbased leader. So actually, we work well in the view of saying, we’ve got problems to solve — let’s solve them.
Carrie Hurihanganui on Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran ( left)
see Greece.
She says she is an optimist herself. “What’s important to me in life is the fundamentals. I have a lovely family. Everybody’s healthy; the kids are doing great.”
Professionally, she loves her role for the potential it offers to be able to help the New Zealand economy, trade and tourism.
“I’m always a glass half- full sort of girl. It does feel like the country has been in a bit of a funk — not a technical term!
“One of the things that appealed to me about New Zealand when I first came here was that there was a kind of pluckiness about it. A give- it- a- go, roll- up- your- sleeves attitude, an optimism.
“You couldn’t hold the country down for very long.
“Covid has been deep and significant, so I am not making light of that but I do feel we haven’t found our pluckiness coming out the other side. Not yet. I think it’s [ a matter of ] time. I do think it’s incumbent on leaders in New Zealand to play a role.”
She says that applies to the public and private sector. “We can spend a long time throwing rocks but then we don’t see the train coming down the tracks because we’re so busy chucking rocks.
“There is a need to get on and do it because otherwise you can ruminate and tread water for years. New Zealand’s facing plenty of examples and we’re kind of feeling the pain right now.
“It’s a matter of how do we break out of that and get into making the changes we want to see rather than talking about the change we want to see.”