KEY POINTS:
A new strategy being developed by the tourist industry seeks to combat hurdles thrown up by global warming, growing competition and low earnings.
Climate change had reached a tipping point towards the end of last year in terms of public opinion, Tourist Industry Association chief executive Fiona Luhrs said.
"The world's environmental conscience seems to have been thoroughly prodded into action.
"It's hard to read from here how intense that's going to be and what impact it is going to have on New Zealand and the tourism industry, but it's certainly going to have an impact," Ms Luhrs said.
Concerns had arisen about carbon emissions generated by long haul flights from the northern hemisphere to this country.
The tourism industry's stance was that this country needed to demonstrate it was as environmentally sustainable as possible.
"That's going to require a commitment to carbon neutrality and environmentally friendly management of companies, and also the development of more green visitor products," she said.
Tourism Minister Damien O'Connor said New Zealand had to convince people in its long haul markets that this country's ability to manage its whole economy sustainably more than offset any concern they might have in getting here.
The possible outcome of concerns in long haul markets about carbon emissions had to be assessed and consideration given to what had to be done in short haul markets to possibly counter that, he said.
Good work was being done to further develop short haul markets in Australia, China and Southeast Asia, not necessarily because of the carbon issue, but coinciding with the growing awareness in European markets.
"If we're going to see a shift we want to make sure that the high value visitors from Europe might be replaced long term by high value visitors from other markets," Mr O'Connor said.
"But at this point we are still working on a way of addressing the climate change concerns and convincing Europeans that it's still a good value proposition to come to New Zealand."
Among other challenges raised by Ms Luhrs was the copying of the 100 per cent Pure New Zealand approach by other countries such as Croatia, Scandinavia and Australia, eroding this country's competitive advantage.
Low cost airlines were also having a big impact on airline choice and travel behaviour, she said.
The Japanese, for instance, were travelling much more around Asia on low cost airlines, particularly to Thailand.
Looking to the bottom line, many tourism businesses were not earning as much as they should to deliver world class returns on investment, limiting their ability to pay more competitive wages and to generate cash to reinvest in the business, Ms Luhrs said.
Understandings also needed to be reached with many communities about the impacts and benefits of tourism in their area.
For the year to March 2005, tourism produced 18.7 per cent of this country's exports and 9 per cent of gross domestic product. Domestic tourism expenditure in 2005 was $9.4 billion and international expenditure $8.1 billion.
The industry is estimated to provide, either directly or indirectly, 10 per cent of this country's jobs.
- NZPA
