By Nicola Greenwell
Interim general manager, Hamilton & Waikato Tourism
With the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, many of our Waikato businesses continue to be severely impacted, particularly those directly involved in the tourism, events, and hospitality sectors.
With Omicron travel-wary consumers, our bars, cafés, and restaurants, as well as retail and transport businesses, are being affected alongside our accommodation providers, activities, and attractions.
There are Waikato companies, including some of our smaller home-grown and often family-owned operations, that are hurting badly.
Our events sector has been severely impacted with many consumer and business events postponing until later this year or 2023, or even cancelling entirely. This affects all those local businesses in the event supply chain – for example, audio visual providers, food and beverage suppliers, transport companies and so on.
Very sadly, some businesses across these sectors are having to significantly downsize or hibernate with jobs being lost, and there are others telling us they are highly likely to have to follow suit.
So, it is imperative that we all get behind our local businesses in ways that we can – and here in the Waikato we are very fortunate to have many companies that have goods and services that are first class and highly desirable.
Hamilton & Waikato Tourism (HWT) certainly welcomes the recent government announcement of a further level of interim support for struggling businesses, but we strongly encourage our mighty local people to keep up their wonderful support of the businesses in our region.
Whether it is visiting our fabulous Waikato attractions, dining out at your favourite local eatery, or picking up some takeaways, or shopping at local stores, you are helping them to stay in business at this challenging time – and to continue to be able to provide employment in our communities.
Our Mighty Local initiative continues to spread the good word about supporting local. We launched Mighty Local two years ago at the start of the COVID outbreak to build awareness of the remarkable companies in our region and the many ways you can support them. The initiative remains as valid today – head to mightylocal.co.nz for further information and ideas.
While there will be some understandable concerns around staying safe in the current red setting, we are blessed here in the Waikato that many of the great experiences and attractions our region does best are in the wide-open spaces of our amazing outdoors.
Added to this, all businesses interacting with the public, including our tourism and hospitality companies, have policies and procedures in place to ensure your safety and enjoyment under the current setting.
Here at HWT we continue to promote the Waikato in a variety of ways, encouraging local residents to get out and enjoy our region, as well as inviting people from other regions to visit and experience our many special places.
We are teaming up with Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) to ensure the Waikato region gets the best exposure in the collaborative and successful national ‘Do Something New, New Zealand’ campaigns that encourage Kiwis to direct their discretionary spending toward travel.
As part of this partnership to inspire more people to experience more of our tourism offerings we are currently running a campaign to highlight that the Waikato is where you can get even more out of our remaining summer. A high-energy video invites viewers to trail blaze by walking or cycling one of our many tracks, savour the flavour at our eateries, make memories enjoying our attractions and have an epic day out here in the Waikato. Check it out at waikatonz.com/summer
Coming up, the Waikato is part of the TNZ autumn campaign to encourage Kiwis to go on holiday over the shoulder season with plenty of activities and attractions on offer even as the weather cools down.
In another initiative with TNZ, we recently invited TVNZ Breakfast to film live from Hamilton when the best of the city – our street art, Hamilton Gardens, Hamilton Zoo and other locations – were beamed out nationwide. There was also a cross-over showing the thrills of blackwater rafting at Waitomo.
Despite the challenges many of our businesses are facing, there has been cause for some celebration too.
The culinary genius of three Waikato restaurants has been recognised in the widely reported Cuisine Good Food Awards. Palate, on Alma Street in Hamilton, was awarded two hats for being consistently outstanding – the judges said, ‘to eat at Palate gives diners a sense of having experienced something special’. Mr Pickles Bar & Eatery, overlooking the river, was named as one of the restaurants to watch this year, as was Alpino in Cambridge.
Another recent national award winner is Discover Waitomo, which took home the Tiakina Taiao environmental leadership award in the Outdoor Awards. Presented by Recreation Aotearoa, this award honours Discover Waitomo, owned by the Tourism Holdings group, for kaitiaki of the three glowworm-studded caves in which it operates tours – Waitomo Glowworm Caves, Ruakuri Cave and Aranui Cave. The company has carried out ecological protection in the caves and the surrounding region for a number of years. It has a dedicated environmental team, climate monitoring systems in the caves, and offers environmental education programmes.
We have also celebrated the winners in the Hamilton Central Business Association’s CBD Awards honouring businesses in the city that have made a real impact over the past year. Our congratulations to them all.
