New Zealand Tourism Strategy 2015 – General Information
Why a Tourism Strategy?
Tourism is a major contributor to the New Zealand economy. It is essential that as a nation we have a clear vision for the sector to work towards in order to maximise the net benefits to New Zealand.
There already is a Tourism Strategy, why a new one?
The NZTS 2015 updates the first national Strategy released in 2001. The operating environment has shifted significantly in recent years and as a nation we must make adjustments to ensure the industry works as well as it can for New Zealand.
The updated Strategy responds much more directly to issues such as climate and technology changes and includes targets to measure success.
What’s different to the last Strategy?
Key changes are:
- A much stronger emphasis on the inter-relationship between tourism and communities
- A greater focus on environmental management
- The inclusion of targets
- The Strategy explicitly acknowledges how tourism must integrate with other sectors to achieve common goals.
Who is the Strategy for?
The Strategy is aimed at a wide group of stakeholders. Everyone connected to or involved with New Zealand’s tourism sector, including operators, local government, central government, and training, education and research institutions.
The Strategy provides any operator with goals to work towards and aspire to. There are many sound ideas that will enhance business and the quality of the visitor experience.
Who was involved in preparing the Strategy?
Three agencies led the Strategy process – the Ministry of Tourism, Tourism New Zealand and the Tourism Industry Association. It has been a government-industry partnership.
An extensive consultation process was undertaken prior to the draft being released in May for feedback. The 2006 Tourism Industry Conference was dedicated to gaining input from across the tourism sector, and a large number of meetings with regional and sector based groups were held. This process ensured strong direction from industry and related stakeholders was gained.
What is the key focus of the Strategy?
The Strategy’s vision is ‘In 2015, tourism is valued as the leading contributor to a sustainable New Zealand economy’ and aims to achieve this by focusing on four key outcomes:
1. New Zealand delivers a world-class visitor experience – by improving quality, offering better booking systems and information, raising recognition of i-SITEs by visitors, raising awareness of Qualmark as a mark of quality, making improvements to monitoring of visitor satisfaction and perceptions of quality, ensuring infrastructure meets demand, co-ordinating domestic tourism planning, and supporting and encourage Maori tourism.
2. New Zealand’s tourism sector is prosperous and attracts ongoing investment – by lifting business performance and increasing return on investment, aligning products and experiences with visitor expectations, with attracting and retaining high quality staff, working to change seasonal patterns and spread demand, and improving research by ensuring accessibility, timeliness, quality and relevance.
3. The tourism sector takes a leading role in protecting and enhancing New Zealand’s environment – by leading a whole-of-New Zealand approach to environmental preservation, understanding visitor expectations and making environmental performance of operators identifiable, leading on reduction of carbon emissions and increasing energy efficiencies, taking active steps to improve waste management, raising environmental knowledge levels in the sector, supporting national efforts, and providing visitors with the ability to learn about and contribute to environmental preservation.
4. The tourism sector and communities work together for mutual benefit – by strengthening partnerships and being an active partner in planning and managing communities, promoting understanding of tourism’s benefits in communities, providing high-quality research to assist with planning, working with communities to preserve and promote their identities, and ensuring adequate infrastructure.
What’s going to happen next?
The next step will be to develop a detailed implementation plan which will be completed in early 2008.
Where can copies be found?
Copies can be downloaded from this website here
This is also the website for information about the Strategy. For further questions email info@nztourismstrategy.com