Editorial: Has tourism become a dirty word in Election 2023?

EDITORIAL:

Before the pandemic, tourism vied with dairy as Aotearoa’s biggest earner of foreign exchange. The industry wants its place in the sun restored.

In the years before Covid-19, international visitors spent about $17 billion a year. That collapsed when borders were closed for 865 days. Over the past year, it has recovered steadily but only to a point. For the year to June, international spending was $8.2b.

A leading voice for the tourism sector, Hotel Council Aotearoa, wants to know why politicians on the hustings haven’t made more of the opportunity to promote what they can do for tourism, which is not only a major revenue earner but also a major employer.

Before the pandemic, tourism directly employed more than 225,000 and while those numbers have fallen, there are still tens of thousands of votes in the tourism workforce.

Before the pandemic, international visitors were spending $48 million a day and paying GST of $1.8b a year.

Of the two main parties, Labour states tourism is one of its top five priorities in its plan to grow the economy but stresses the aim is to build sustainable and higher-value tourism that doesn’t overstep its social licence. National’s leader Christopher Luxon has promised a new Great Walk, e-bike chargers on cycle trails and a revamp of working holiday visas.

But at around the same time as Labour released its policy, it also announced plans to cut spending to the state-funded marketing agency Tourism New Zealand, which sells this country overseas. As part of the drive to rein in spending across the public sector, cuts of $15m will be made to its $111m baseline budget in coming years.

This comes as the agency, which is about to launch a big international campaign, is facing growing costs of marketing as this country faces red-hot competition for tourists.

By Hotel Council Aotearoa’s calculations, the coming cut to funding to Tourism NZ means the agency will have suffered decreases of 16.3 per cent over 10 years. Meanwhile, Tourism Australia is getting a bump of more than $30m to $200m to do its work next year.

Here, sector leaders are uniting around the urgent need for wholesale reform of governance structures and funding mechanisms, both at a national and regional level.

The tourism industry believes it has repeatedly come up with innovative ideas, including a willingness to consider new national levies if introduced in accordance with best practices overseas.

This Government has had an awkward relationship with the tourism industry during the past six years. It was never going to be an easy one when the pandemic hit and the necessary steps it took to protect the country were financially devastating for the sector. Operators believed they should have been the beneficiary of more targeted support. Luxon, who as a former Air New Zealand chief executive ran the country’s biggest tourism business for seven years, has not said much specifically about the sector since the policy launch in Queenstown.

The council fears tourism has become a dirty word. That’s a stretch; there are other hot-button issues where political milage is easier to gain in the lead-up to polling day. However, the role of sustainable tourism in boosting the economy must be closer to the top of the political agenda after the election.