“The days of allowing tourist hordes to some of New Zealand’s best-known natural attractions are over, the government has signalled, as it unveiled new plans to protect the environment and reconsider the role of tourism in its economy.
“The tourism minister, Stuart Nash, outlined on Tuesday plans to “reset” tourism for a post-Covid world – planning for fewer international visitors and attempting to diversify the economies of tourism-dependent towns.
“Some of the country’s best-known natural attractions, such as Unesco world heritage site Milford Sound-Piopiotahi, will be transformed to take far fewer visitors. The dramatic slopes, still waters, and frolicking fur seals of Milford Sound-Piopiotahi have attracted millions of visitors.”
Which is quite a lot for essentially pristine wilderness in the middle of nowhere.
“But the site “cannot return to its pre-Covid state”, Nash said. Previously, it had been under “significant pressure” from 870,000 annual visitors – a deluge of people that Nash said undermined the infrastructure and cultural and environmental values of the place.”
As it turns out, this is exactly the subject of my photography exhibition on Milford Sound and international tourism on at the Auckland Photography Festival starting next week. More details here.
The elephant in the room:
“Tourism is a major part of New Zealand’s economy. According to Tourism Industry Aotearoa, it is the country’s biggest export industry, making up about 20% of total exports. Tourism spend makes up a large chunk of the country’s overall economy, accounting for more than 5% of GDP, and directly or indirectly employing 13.6% of the national workforce.”
It will be interesting to see how the various interest groups in New Zealand society come to some sort of compromise on this, going forward.
The NZ government is putting at least some money where its mouth is:
“Nash outlined more concrete plans for the government’s new vision, including a $200m package, more than half of which will go to struggling South Island towns hit hard by the border closure. As well as supporting some businesses to reopen when visitors return, large chunks of the funding would be devoted to helping businesses and communities to break their dependency on international tourists. Twenty million dollars would go to the popular Queenstown Wanaka region, “to help develop alternative industries”. Another $15m would go to the “transformation [which] is needed to protect Milford Sound-Piopiotahi”.
Concrete plans are good.