KEY POINTS:
Newly re-elected Queenstown Lakes Mayor Clive Geddes is the first person to admit there are "serious" challenges facing the fastest-growing area in New Zealand, but rather than seeing them as problems, he views them as opportunities for the Queenstown Lakes district to lead the way.
Mr Geddes wants
a change in focus for the "adventure capital" of New Zealand, to "a more sure and mature resort", a different type of visitor and a sustainable economy.
"I'm really keen to see the council and the community start to think more about ways to meet the challenge of sustainability.
"In terms of economic diversity, we should be more aggressive to try and shift us away from our reliance on people who only stay for two or three days... we want them for a week."
He also wanted more effort put in to marketing Queenstown as a place to work, not just visit. To that end, Mr Geddes wants to set up an organisation, similar to Destination Queenstown, whose role it is to promote and market employment opportunities in Queenstown.
The purpose was twofold to place more value on people who came to the district for work, and to stabilise the workforce.
However, the "vital" piece of information going forward was learning where Queenstown's growth was to come from and how to secure it.
If that growth did not eventuate, there could be a "wash-out" in the visitor accommodation sector.
With a potential oversupply of rooms, growth at 1 per cent per annum and occupancy levels required to be at least 60 per cent, another 400,000 people needed to be found within the next three years, Mr Geddes said.
"If we can't find those people... the overall occupancy will drop.
"We have to start thinking about it now... to make sure we don't hit a big downturn."
However, Mr Geddes was
optimistic.
"I think we've got some fantastic opportunities in the future for us as a district to adopt really good best practice in sustainability.
"That to me is the opportunity... we could, in the 10-year period, look back and say in 2007-08 we got the direction right."
The highlights from the past six
years were many "I could go on for two hours" but with the highlights came challenges and lessons.
"We must always be maintaining and refreshing the ways we go about the community's business.
"Just because it's worked for the past 10 years doesn't mean it's going to work for the next five.
"We have to be constantly critical of ourselves."
He had had only one major disappointment in his six years as the district's mayor: the council's decision in September to defer public consultation on the proposed Remarkables Park Centre, in Queenstown, while the council took the project in-house and did more work on it.
"The project had been put together by a volunteer community working group over a five-year period. They reported back to the council on a comprehensive and regular basis and I was really disappointed that the final outcome of that was basically to park the project while a lot of work that had already been done was done again.
"That would be my single biggest disappointment.
"But that was about the process and then again, you've got to balance these things... for example, the Aquatic Centre. The council got that right and it's going to be a huge asset for this community."
