19th March 2024 By Paul Yandall | paul@tourismticker.com | @tourismticker
Funding maintenance of New Zealand’s world-class tracks is the biggest challenge for those working in the industry, says Kylie Ruwhiu-Karawana.
The managing director of TRC Tourism opened this morning the Sustainable Trails Conference, which is being held at The Gate in Cromwell over the next three days.
The event, the first to be held in New Zealand since 2019, will bring together Kiwi and Australian trail designers and planners, government and agencies, and conservation and recreation groups to discuss the industry’s opportunities and challenges.
“One of the challenges a lot of our trails have throughout Aotearoa and Australia is that they have to find funding for maintenance,” Ruwhiu-Karawana told the Ticker.
“From a planning and governance perspective, it’s something that we need to make sure that we’re addressing from the very beginning, once you even start to look at aligning a track or working on the development towards putting a track in, or even wanting to take on a track development as part of your overall destination management.”
Ruwhiu-Karawana said trails were a strong driver of visitation, especially to the regions, but investment needed to go beyond design and construction.
“We don’t always think about how are we going to derive revenue from a track, or how we are going to enable us to maintain that track into the future,” she said.
“They are always going to require maintenance and we know from all of the weather events we’ve had up north [last year] that it’s not just about day-to-day maintenance, it’s also about contingency for large weather events that we need to contend with.
“That’s probably the biggest challenge. Trying to ensure that you’ve got a strong, resilient, regenerative focus socially, culturally, environmentally and economically to ensure that your track can maintain its offering for a destination into the future.”
TRC Tourism’s Sustainable Trails Conference will also canvass the impacts trails have on local communities, the role they can play in wellbeing, conservation, and how they can contribute to sustainability and resilience.
“We’re building it even further and looking at inclusivity and accessibility and ensuring that we’re not just building sustainable aspects into our trails from an environmental perspective, but are we making it accessible to everyone who wants to access our walkways and our cycleway,” Ruwhiu-Karawana.
“For indigenous people, getting out into our whenua is vital for that transference of knowledge, for us to understand who we are and where we’ve come from. So, what do accessibility and inclusivity look like in a trail context? I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve got a lot of people coming to talk about that for this year.”
The three-day Sustainable Trails Conference starts today and its details and registration can be accessed here.
