Nats unveil NZ tourism festival, new industry fund

2nd October 2020 By Paul Yandall | paul@tourismticker.com | @tourismticker

A New Zealand tourism festival and a new contestable Tourism 2025 Fund have been announced as part of the National Party’s new tourism policy.

The Supporting our tourism sector policy was unveiled Friday afternoon in Rotorua by National Party leader Judith Collins, tourism spokesperson Todd McClay, and Māori tourism spokesperson Harete Hipango.

“Tourism was one of New Zealand’s biggest export earners and employed 400,000 people, and under a National Government it will be again,” Collins said.

Judith Collins

“National has listened to the sector and developed a plan to work collaboratively by partnering with local government, iwi and tourism sector representatives as well as tourism businesses to speed up decision making and cut out the bureaucracy.”

The party’s new tourism policy outlines about a dozen measures a National-led government would take to rebuild New Zealand’s tourism sector.

Among the new initiatives was a New Zealand Tourism Festival “to help local communities and regions across the country and support the domestic tourism market”.

“The festival is modelled off the REAL New Zealand Festival that ran over Rugby World Cup 2011 and saw over 1200 home-grown events in 86 towns and centres across the country,” National’s tourism policy document said.

“National will do it again at a bigger scale to assist the recovery of the tourism industry and regional economies.”

The party said it would work with the Lotteries Commission, Tourism New Zealand and industry bodies to “progress a programme of events and funding for this event to be held in 2021”.

Also new was a Tourism 2025 Fund to help the recovery of the sector.

“The fund will bring together unallocated funding from the Tourism Infrastructure Fund and from the International Visitor Levy. It will also manage any remainder from the Strategic Tourism Asset Protection Programme,” National said.

“National would work with the industry to establish criteria that would be used to allocate this funding. This fund will cover tourism businesses as well as travel agents, inbound tour operators, tour companies, and event providers.”

The previously announced Tourism Accelerator, which would allocate $100m over four years, would see operators eligible to apply for up to 70% of the funding needed for new products. Also previously announced was National’s commitment to start work on two new National Parks and two new Great Walks.

With its $5m commitment to fund Tourism Industry Aotearoa’s annual TRENZ event in 2021 and 2022, new tourism-specific funding over four years for the sector would be $105m.

National also said it would make the tourism minister role a senior Cabinet minister “who is accountable to the sector and gets things done”.

Collins criticised the current tourism minister, Kelvin Davis, as being “invisible” during the Covid crisis.

“Labour’s attitude to tourism over recent years has been marked by a lack of leadership, misunderstanding the sector, slow decision-making, and too much bureaucracy,” she said.

“Inexplicable decisions have been made, including axing the valuable Accommodation Survey because government departments argued over funding it.

“We will rule out new tourism taxes, bring back and enhance the collection of tourism data, and modernise legislation including the Conservation Act 1987 and National Parks Act 1980 to be more tourism friendly.”

Other initiatives included using National’s proposed infrastructure bank to partner with local government to help build tourism infrastructure, a tertiary scholarship programme, developing Māori tourism, freezing bed taxes and new levies and charges, and investigating a freedom camping licence regime.

National said its proposed Border Protection Agency would also help ensure safe travel bubbles with Covid-free countries.

Tourism spokesperson Todd McClay said the tourism sector faced its biggest challenge in modern times due to Covid-19 and the closure of the border.

“Closing the border cut off the international visitor market, worth more than $23bn in 2019,” McClay said.

“National has already indicated we would look at flexible travel arrangements for people entering New Zealand from countries and territories that are Covid-free, such as the Pacific Islands, but only once it was safe to do so and we had set up our dedicated border agency, Te Korowai Whakamaru/NZ Border Protection Agency.”

Māori tourism spokesperson Harete Hipango said National would support and build capability “so that the essence of Māori tourism continues to be represented to the domestic and international market”.

Read National’s new tourism policy here.