David Morris: A good try, but rugby tourist numbers just don't add up

Opinion

Let's cut the rubbish that's being hyped about the Rugby World Cup and its effect on tourism.

On TV One's Close Up Mark Sainsbury, commenting on freedom camping, said something to the effect that the problems would become much worse next year with the advent of the cup. What hooey.

The most recent projection of overseas visitors numbers as a result of the cup is 85,000. I suspect that this is a highly optimistic assessment, possibly designed to bolster demands for more money from central and local government.

Even if that number is realised, it is a fractional improvement in the overall numbers of tourists arriving every year.

As at February we had 2.5 million international visitors a year. At best 85,000 represents a 3.4 per cent increase.

Now, that's not to be dismissed disdainfully, especially because it will occur mostly in the off-season. Most tourist operators will see a tidy improvement in their September to November figures, but they won't be rushing off to buy a new Jaguar XFR.

Silliest of all is the idea that Auckland must massively increase its infrastructure to cope with the demand. For example, there was a suggestion we should rush to get a rail line to the airport to cope with the numbers.

The cup carnival has certainly been used as a reason to rush construction of the new Mangere Bridge. And every time someone has a bright idea for spending more millions, it seems the cup is used as an excuse.

This nonsense misses the statistics by a country mile. To start with, not all those 85,000 souls will arrive through Auckland. And they most certainly will not arrive on the same day.

To put it in perspective, Auckland International Airport caters for 3.7 million international passenger movements a year, or about 10,000 a day. And that's an average.

In the peak flood of the summer tourist season the daily arrivals and departures would be much higher. The Auckland tourism infrastructure - hotels, motels, rental cars etc - deals with tens of thousands of international visitors every week, not to mention the millions of domestic passengers every year. In August, September and October there is a natural excess of capacity.

The cup will fill that rather nicely but it won't require a vast increase in capital outlay to meet the demand. Somehow, though, that's the impression we get from the spruikers who are talking up the show, usually to convince local and national politicians that they should keep sending the money.

Much the same could be said about the "party central" concepts for the wharf area. It's as though we need to have a super-flash venue to entertain what - let's be honest - will be a lot of boozed-up Brits and Aussies with a sprinkling of South Africans. I don't think they'd give a monkey's cuss about the building's design as long as the beer holds out.

I'm certain that a couple of clever interior designers could come up with a super-cool fit-out for the wharf sheds, the centrepiece of which would be some large screens, an even larger bar area and loud music afterwards.

Attention, Messrs McCully, Key, and Lee: Forget the high-flying rhetoric, forget the fancy plans, forget the bullswool ... give the old cargo sheds a coat of paint, a sensational internal fit-out (Cost? ... say half a mill max) and let's just party hearty.

Oh, and keep the change for later when we really want to do something "iconic" (that over-used adjective) with the area.

* David Morris is an Auckland tourist operator and author of A New Zealand Travel Guide at http://New-Zealand-Travel-Guide.com