Tourism minister Stuart Nash is once again pitching New Zealand to high value tourists, but is that the best course for the environment and a sector in recovery, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in The Bulletin.
$10-a-day tourists go home?
Given everything that was going on last week, it’s possible reaction to tourism minister Stuart Nash’s comments last week about the kinds of tourists we are seeking to attract, got slightly overlooked here. Or maybe everyone agrees that we don’t want “people who put on Facebook how they can travel around our country on $10 a day eating two-minute noodles” visiting New Zealand? Nash made the comments at the launch of a draft plan focused on strengthening tourism and hospitality workforces. The sentiment also isn’t new. Nash made comments in 2020 that New Zealand would “unashamedly” target the wealthy – the type of tourist who “flies business class or premium economy, hires a helicopter, does a tour around Franz Josef and then eats at a high-end restaurant.”
Global grappling with tourism
There’s no doubt that tourist destinations all over the world are rethinking tourism and trying to balance concerns about conservation, climate change, economic recovery and quality of life for residents who live in tourist hotspots. In Venice, residents report feeling “suffocated” by an “economic machine” that has focused on tourism. These issues also pre-date the pandemic. The line in today’s feature image is a blatant rip-off of sentiment being expressed all over Barcelona in graffiti form in 2017 and 2018. Closer to home, Crux’s new documentary series which so far has spotlighted the future of tourism in the Milford Sound and disagreements about the need to build an airport in a small central Otago town, provide local examples of these tensions.
“Nothing to see, apart from lakes and Scottish mountains”
Nash’s comments actually got a fair bit of attention overseas, in part because they slot into that global narrative. Lifestyle magazine Monocle, inews, the Telegraph and Fortune magazine all picked them up. They also landed around the same time as RyanAir CEO Michael O’Leary’s headline grabbing comments about the days of €10 airfares being over, providing a good package. In French newspaper, Le Figaro the $10-a-day line got traction, drawing a range of comments (all roughly translated here by Google Translate). “We should do the same in a lot of places…tired of these teeming masses who wander around with their coke” wrote one commenter. “Who still wants to hit a 24-hour plane to go to a country with nothing to see, apart from lakes and Scottish mountains? Paris-Aberdeen 2 hours by plane…” wrote gey75/06/2900.
“New Zealand is damn cheeky, the rich are the ones who pollute the most.”
Among the Le Figaro comments was this one: “New Zealand is damn cheeky, the rich are the ones who pollute the most.” In the Guardian’s report on Nash’s comments, James Higham, a professor of tourism at Otago University said “Big spenders are often the most environmentally damaging”. Higham also questioned the assumption that “high net worth individuals” contribute more to New Zealand than budget travellers. Affluent cruise ship visitors, for example, only make up 3% of visitor spend, despite being 9% of visitors. Newstalk ZB’s Francesca Rudkin asked whether we can afford to be fussy if we want tourism to recover. Rudkin agrees that we need a more environmentally conscious and sustainable industry but questioned whether “we need to be exclusive and snobby to get it?”