Unfortunately, the recovery of our visitor sector took a step backwards with the lockdown of the Auckland region. Auckland is our biggest drive market from a corporate and leisure travel perspective, and we immediately saw the cancellations of bookings for the next two to three weeks.
Adding to our woes was the return of Alert Level 2 for the Waikato region, which led to the postponement or cancellation of large events, and the return of physical distancing and compulsory contact tracing.
Up until the change in alert levels, we were starting to the see the benefit of increased domestic visitors into the region, as well as the lift in expenditure. We are all hopeful that this is just a short-term blip on our Covid-19 recovery journey.
This time of year has traditionally been a quieter time for the region with regards to tourism, and is giving us the time to rethink the future of our sector for the short and long-term.
There is no doubt that some parts of New Zealand were under significant pressure from visitor numbers leading to issues around over-tourism and eroding the social licence to operate around the country.
Here in the Waikato, we still had the space to disperse domestic and international visitors around lesser known places of our region, plus our shoulder season events calendar was growing.
However, we still had challenges around transport connectivity, mobile phone black spots, a shortage of large-scale commercial accommodation in Hamilton, Waitomo and Matamata, and the inability to introduce regional visitor levies to fund key infrastructure in our destination communities.
The Tourism Futures Taskforce has been established by the Government to help us use this ‘circuit-breaker’ of Covid-19 to reassess and reimagine a sustainable tourism sector that actively contributes to the wellbeing of our communities and creates added-value experiences for our domestic and international visitor market.
The Taskforce will advise on what changes New Zealand can make to the tourism system and make long-term recommendations to address the long-standing productivity, inclusivity and sustainability issues present in some part of the sector.
For Waikato, we were already ahead of the pack by adopting our Tourism Opportunities Plan in 2016. This two-year project involved a range of community, industry and iwi consultation to identify our key game-changers, plus identify opportunities to increase the ‘value vs volume’ challenge for the region.
We will use this plan, and our achievements to date, as a foundation to implement a destination management approach for the Waikato and broaden the scope of community involvement, plus align to the many regional strategies and plans to ensure an integrated approach is fully realised.
Developing a destination management framework will also raise a number of issues, challenges, ideas and solutions which we can feed into the Tourism Futures Taskforce as they seek wider contributions from around New Zealand. The big question to be addressed in this work is how will we successfully co-curate a future for tourism in Waikato that benefits everyone. We were also successful in attracting funding from the Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme (STAPP) for regional tourism organisations based on the retention of our existing local government funding. This additional funding will make up the significant shortfall of industry investment from our tourism operators, accommodation providers, tour and transport businesses, suppliers plus the events and venues sector.
The STAPP funding will help us deliver 27 projects over the next 12 months under the three Government priority areas for investment – domestic marketing, industry capability building and destination management.
Out of the 27 programmes of work, 11 are collaboration projects with other regions which border the Waikato. Examples include touring route development with Ruapehu and Taranaki, partnering with Auckland on a joint venture campaign, plus rolling out a regenerative tourism programme across the Central North Island.
We look forward to updating you on the progress of these regional projects over the coming months as we rebuild and reimagine the future of our tourism.
Hamilton & Waikato Tourism is the regional tourism organisation charged with increasing international and domestic leisure and business travellers, expenditure and stay.
The organisation is funded through a public/private partnership and covers the heartland Waikato areas of Hamilton City, Matamata-Piako, Otorohanga, South Waikato, Waikato, Waipa and Waitomo Districts. Find out more: www.waikatonz.com
