Tourism has word for Government

By CHRIS DANIELS tourism writer

The Government's business policies have come in for some criticism at New Zealand's largest annual gathering of the tourism industry.

Speaking on the first day of Trenz 2004, chief executive of the Tourism Industry Association, John Moriarty, said the Government's role was important to the tourism industry, since so much of it was based around the use of public assets.

While Tourism Minister Mark Burton had "taken public sector participation in tourism to a new level", this was not always the case with the Government's approach to business in general.

Moriarty said the partnership approach was extremely hard to spot in the Government's overall approach to business.

Business wanted policies that would lift New Zealand's economic performance, but perceived this was disdained by the Government.

But Moriarty said there was "increasing evidence" that the Government understood it was part of the tourism business, as a business partner, by running its assets in an increasingly business-like fashion.

He said that DoC, as either the owner or guardian of much of the tourism public estate, was showing an increasingly business-like perspective by sustaining its assets and preserving options for their future use.

"It's a good start," he said.

"But I don't believe that Government, overall, understands that they are in business too - in business with the rest of New Zealand.

"Let's get down to the heart of it. Business starts and ends with customers - everything."

Moriarty said New Zealand needed to "kick the habit" of worshipping ever-increasing volumes of visitors and instead develop the habit of "honouring visitor value and visitor satisfaction".

Ireland was an example of a country that could cope with 50 per cent more visitors each year than its own population.

Burton used the occasion of the conference to announce a new cash injection to the industry's "Qualmark" system of categorising hotels and tourist operations.

The Government would spend an additional $500,000 over the next two years on the scheme, which now included a sophisticated 'niche' category of 'exclusive' to be added to the top rating of five stars.

The minister said that this new rating would be attained only by a very small group of absolutely first-rate tourist businesses.