Tiki tour for adrenalin junkies

Rising demand for thrill-seeking is creating a boom in New Zealand's adventure tourism business. But how safe is it? WARREN GAMBLE investigates.

For a split second after stepping off the Sky Tower you will feel as if you have made the biggest mistake in your soon-to-be-shortened life.

"It's probably the longest half a second in the world," says the man behind Auckland's newest high-adrenalin attraction, Nick Andreef.

Even when the allegedly gentle and reassuring tug of the jump cable kicks in, you will still be plummeting feet-first towards the city landscape at 60km/h. Your stomach will have disappeared.

Terminal velocity for a human body is around 200km/h but Andreef adds cheerfully that you cannot really tell the difference - until you come to a smooth stop near the ground.

"It sounds terrible, but everyone who has seen the device working has wanted to have a go."

The 192m, $195 Sky Jump opens to the public today with television celebrities among the first to put themselves on the line.

When they get their breath back they can claim to have made the second highest controlled leap in the world, after a South African bungy drop.

It will be the highest tower jump, and the only one using a cable system pioneered by thrill-seeking guides at Waitomo.

Next year the tower will also host a guided tourist climb up its mast to a crow's nest 275m above the ground.

The city's other man-made icon, the Harbour Bridge, made its adventure tourism debut last week, with Prime Minister Helen Clark joining the first guided tour around and over the main arches 65m above the harbour.

The new attractions are capitalising on New Zealand's tourist-grabbing reputation as being not only clean and green, but extreme.

Bungy jumping and white-water rafting put the country on the adventure map in the past decade and the continued demand for thrills has seen innovative ways to make the scenery come alive.

The question that hangs over this burgeoning and lucrative industry - backpackers spend more than $650 million a year here - is safety.

It is a sometimes uneasy balance between government bodies upholding safety standards and operators offering activities which by their definition depend on risk.

Adventure tourism operators acknowledge a "she'll be right" attitude in the industry's younger days, but say that is disappearing. A generic standard for adventure businesses is being developed, allied to specific standards for activities as diverse as horse trekking and jet boating.

In downtown Auckland young tourists on a highly charged tour of the country are philosophical about the risks.

"I just put my life in their hands and hope they are not cowboy operators," says 26-year-old Irish traveller Neil Browne, who has been skydiving, rafting and jetboating.

"It's just something you have to do when you get here."

Swedish tourist Anna Johnson probably wishes she hadn't. The 29-year-old returned home last weekend after spending most of her New Zealand holiday in hospital after an accident at the Fly-By-Wire adventure ride near Queenstown.

She received two broken arms and other upper body injuries when the rocket-shaped plane, suspended on wires and able to reach speeds of up to 145km/h, crashed into safety handrails three weeks ago.

The accident was the fifth in the Queenstown area's adventure tourism industry since July. It followed the death of a white-water rafter on the Shotover River, a jetboat accident on the same river which injured 11 people, a hang glider crash which left the pilot with serious spinal injuries, and a paragliding mishap where a 12-year-old girl slipped from her tandem harness, receiving serious injuries.

No overall statistics are kept on those killed or injured in adventure tourism.

But in a study published this year for Massey University's department of management and international business, researchers found eight out of every 100,000 overseas visitors were sent to hospital as a result of adventure tourism activities between 1982 and 1996.

That compared to 12 out of 100,000 tourists hospitalised from vehicle accidents.

Although international comparisons were not available, the authors argue the rate was unacceptably high given the relatively low exposure to adventure tourism compared to driving.

But a breakdown of the accident sources showed unguided, independent activities, such as skiing and mountaineering, had the highest injury counts. Off the mountain, cycle touring and horse riding had the largest injury counts and activities like white-water rafting had a lower incidence, but often more severe injuries.

Despite its perceived high risk, bungy jumping has had one of the lowest injury rates and no deaths.

The study found cases of smaller operators putting the pressure to make profits ahead of safety concerns, for example, by carrying on in marginal weather.

The researchers argued for greater regulation in some activities but acknowledged "there is a delicate balance to be struck between ensuring that tourism businesses are not swamped by bureaucracy and red tape, while their clients are offered an experience that falls within internationally acceptable levels of risk and injury".

The chairman of the Adventure Tourism Council, Greg Caigou, says the quality tourism standards being developed for the industry will put the seal on an improving safety environment.

"The early days of quicker bucks and cowboys are gone. You can't survive if you are not safe."

On top of the generic quality standards being developed through the Tourist Industry Association, specific standards are progressively coming into force and operators assessed by industry auditors Qualmark.

Caigou says among the incentives to reach such standards was a growing trend for offshore litigation against negligent tourist operators.

Andreef, whose Waitomo Adventures Ltd won Sky City's backing for the tower jump, says when he started in the adventure industry 13 years ago a "wild west" mentality prevailed among some operators.

"In the old days you used to employ people who were recreational climbers and cavers and put them in charge of tourists.

"It was not such a bright thing to do. Just because you are good at something and can keep yourself safe does not mean you understand risk management for clients."

Andreef says today the attitude is different. His Lost World caving operation, which includes a 100m abseil and underground river journey, has never had a life-threatening injury to a client since it began in 1988.

A key to that record is ensuring guides are correctly trained to standards since adopted as national qualifications.

If the guides are top calibre, they will ensure the equipment is correctly maintained and operated.

Andreef says the Sky Jump began from an idea from one of Lost World's guides, Dave Ray, known as Rambo.

Five years ago he talked about descending into the Lost World cave by cable using a variation on an Air Force parachute training device.

After a stint in Europe, Ray turned up at Waitomo with a device that Andreef says "looked like he had gutted a washing machine". Several hair-raising trials later, the company's engineer, Steve Weidmann, built the prototype for the tower jump.

The wire cable attached to the jumper's harness feeds off a drum which rotates large fan blades. They create the air resistance which limits the speed of the fall.

Getting the device approved for public use has taken three years. Like all land-based commercial adventure activities with mechanical parts, it needed registration as an amusement device by the Occupational Safety and Health Service (OSH).

The process involves clearance from an independent engineer, and OSH approval. Because of its novelty, a full safety audit was required every six months.

"But once it is done to the OSH standard of approval there is public confidence to know that it's safe."

Adventure tourism safety is handled by three different agencies, divided into land (OSH), water (the Maritime Safety Authority) and air (the Civil Aviation Authority).

All three work under separate legislation but each sets minimum standards and puts the onus on operators to prove they have reached and maintained them. Large fines and closure of business are among the penalties for offenders.

Apart from registering amusement devices, which include everything from rollercoasters to merry-go-rounds, OSH also has a more general oversight through the Health and Safety in Employment Act.

It requires employers, including those with paying customers, to take all practicable safety steps.

The Southland services manager for OSH, John Pannett, says adventure tourism is a balance between the perceived risk and the actual risk.

"We could say no risk is satisfactory, or no possibility of danger is satisfactory and we will not allow them to run. Sure, we would have no accidents, but clearly that would not be society's wish."

Instead, for amusement devices the service relies on the expertise of certified engineers who inspect and sign them off.

For other activities the service encourages the creation of codes of practice. That does not exempt operators from prosecution if an accident happens, but they could argue it is part of taking all practicable steps.

OSH does not have an inspectorate making regular checks of approved adventure tourist operations, but Pannett says because of the spate of accidents in the Queenstown area recently it will probably be making compliance visits early next year.

It will look at half-a-dozen sites, including horse trekking operators.

The Maritime Safety Authority says co-operation with the adventure tourism industry is the best way to lift safety standards.

After a series of white-water rafting deaths in the early 1990s the authority and the rafting operators drew up a code of practice. This led to rafting and jetboating standards being enshrined in a 1994 rule under the Maritime and Transport Act.

The two rafting fatalities this year are the first since 1995.

Maritime safety rules require operators to have a safe operating plan, including hazard identification and evacuation procedures. They must also have an approved training programme, and an audit from an authorised inspector.

The authority's deputy director, standards and compliance, Bruce Maroc, says the authority does not believe a prescriptive approach is justified.

Its review of the commercial jetboating industry, for example, showed that while safety improvements were needed, banning activities or imposing strict limits would be less effective than getting operators to improve their safety culture.

One area that could be tightened was extra training for drivers.

The costs of tougher laws have to be weighed against the benefits of the activity.

"We were able to say in all probability if you have prescriptive legislation it would have a significant impact on the viability of the industry and we did not believe that approach was warranted," Maroc says.

In the air, the Civil Aviation Authority is writing a new rule, effective from next year, to govern adventure aviation.

It will add another layer of approval for commercial operations, including parachuting, microlighting, ballooning and gliding, which now rely on pilot licensing and minimum operations and maintenance rules to run.

The new rule will require an air operator certificate setting minimum safety standards for specific activities.

One option is to give the certificates to industry bodies, which will then have responsibility to monitor their members' compliance.

For Andreef the worry is that any moves to tighten regulations will end up "throwing out the baby with the bathwater".

"Philosophically, I'm really opposed to the idea that people should not take some responsibility for their own welfare."

He is confident that Sky Jump can continue his company's unblemished safety record. Once people are hooked up, he says, the simplicity of the device means it is hard to get into trouble.

Looking up at the tower from outside his hostel, Irish tourist Browne was rueful that he had to leave before the jump opened.

"That would be something to tell everyone at home."