Crankworx Rotorua 2020 dates announced as economic benefits revealed

Thomas Lemoine during Crankworx Rotorua. Photo / Mead Norton Photography

Crankworx Rotorua injected an estimated $4.1 million into the Rotorua economy this year alone.

That's according to the report Crankworx staff presented to the council's Operations and Monitoring Committee this morning. The $4.1m adds to the $22.59m injected since the event began in 2015.

Ariki Tibble, Tuk Mutu, Tu Mutu and Dave Donaldson reflected on the event at the committee meeting and announced the event dates for 2020 would be from March 2 to 8.

Event director Tibble compared the first year of the event in 2015 with the 2019 event at the meeting saying they had gone from 24,000 visitors over the event to 46,000 this year.

International viewership had grown from 1.8 million people to 15.2 million and volunteer numbers had grown from 190 to 490.

"There's no shortage of people who want to get involved in the event. Over 75 per cent of the people who attend as volunteers are from our local community."

Maxxis Slopestyle at Crankworx. Photo / File

Tibble said they would have to bring the volunteer cap down.

"Not because we're struggling to get people involved, the opposite is the truth."

Tibble said they had also grown commercial investment while dropping public investment, which is what they wanted.

"If we didn't have public investment supporting this we wouldn't have people working on this event now, we simply couldn't sustain the personnel and the work that has to take place year-round."

Crankworx event director Ariki Tibble at the Skyline Rotorua Crankworx site. Photo / File

Tibble said 2019 was the best event yet and a $150,000 investment from the council had contributed to that.

Tibble said the event was focused on four things - destination marketing, maximising community benefits, changing community perception and economic benefits - and achieved those.

"It's extremely relieving to be sitting in front of you five years down the track and saying this event is delivering how we said it would.

"I think there'd be very few things that would return investment quite like Crankworx Rotorua. We have it under licensed for many years to come. We just have to look after it," Tibble said.

"This event is ours. It is ours to run with, ours to leverage and ours to lose."

Tibble said in his opinion the event was one of the best when it came to returns on investment.

"I think other destinations ... would chomp at the bit at the chance to host something like this. I'd put money on it."

Mayor Steve Chadwick said the event was iconic.

"This is an event where I can't go anywhere without this being mentioned. The dirt is our new snow."

Councillor Merepeka Raukawa-Tait said the event was also about wellbeing.

"This is what Crankworx is. It's not just about the event, it's actually about the pride that you give to the city, it's about the leadership that you've shown.

"This is about community engagement, this is about inclusiveness, this is about people such as yourselves sitting there who actually believe it before they see it ... This is vision."