NZ Govt urged to help tourism communities to manage destinations

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Assistance is being forwarded by the New Zealand government to help communities fund their ambitions for destination management.

Millions of funds have already been set aside to assist regional tourist groups in the development and implementation of destination management strategies.

Hawke’s Bay Tourism chief executive Hamish Saxton stated that rural tourism agencies had received significant government funding in recent years.

“As part of that, regions were encouraged – almost mandated – to develop destination management plans,” Saxton said.

“The biggest challenge moving forward is that since funding from government has concluded, it puts regional tourism organisations and regions as a whole in a very challenging position of how they’re going to implement these plans.”

His regional tourism group was reliant on funds from the local government. This left them in an awkward situation as their region struggled to recover from Cyclone Gabrielle.

“If we are to attempt to drive demand but also look through a lens of regeneration, then we need extra resources to do so.”

These initiatives were not only intended to improve the various locations for visitors, but also to make the towns better places to live by leveraging the visitor economy to do so, he explained.

With over 30 separate destination management plans, he stated that a national plan was also required to address the continued significance of tourism to communities and the economy.

Tourism Minister Peeni Henare indicated that the government will look into possibly increasing funding for destination management plans.

“It’s going to take the council, tourism operators, community and everyone in those destination management planning exercises to contribute and to be able to deliver on the destination management plan. Of course, central government does have a role in that,” Henare said.

“There are exciting opportunities there. But we’re also realistic about some of those plans. The aspiration is huge and it’s awesome because we’ve encouraged that to come out in their plans.

“But it’s going to take some time to build towards those and it isn’t – using the good old cricket analogy – it’s not about hitting a six every ball. Sometimes you’ve got to accumulate runs on the board.”

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