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Punakaiki Beach Camp and Paparoa Track Services manager Jed Findlay on the opening of the Paparoa Trail, the launch of a new venture, living with extreme weather and Punakaiki’s big redevelopment plans.

Jed Findlay

Our family have run the Punakaiki Beach Camp for the last six years and we love it. With the recent opening of the Paparoa Track on 1 December, we started a new business – Paparoa Track Services – offering transport for walkers and mountain bikers to Blackball where the track starts. We’ve got an 18-seat bus and a 20-bike trailer and we’ve started to see people arriving at the camp.

It’s an exciting time with the opening of New Zealand’s 10^th Great Walk – the first new track in 25 years. Our camp is perfectly positioned at the end of the track and despite it not being fully open (there are slips caused by recent bad weather), we’re still getting some people through as it is possible to walk or bike about 20 kilometres at both ends of the track.

Conveniently, visitors can stay at the Punakaiki Beach Camp before and after they walk or cycle the track. We run shuttles at 8am to get visitors to the start of the track by 9.20am. From the end of the track, the campground is across the road, so it’s perfectly placed so that visitors can pick up their keys, have a shower and relax and enjoy being by the ocean.

Unfortunately, due to the section of track that is currently closed, everyone who had booked transport has cancelled. It was pretty painful cancelling all those bookings, but we’re not distraught as we’ve retained plenty of accommodation bookings and Christmas is our busiest week of the year. We also know we’re likely to get those people that cancelled back in the future.

Prior to the Paparoa Track opening, our customers were predominantly international visitors in campervans, except for Christmas and New Year, which has always been booked out by New Zealanders. We expect to see a big increase in the domestic market and we’re really excited about that because they’re more likely to be return customers and we have a Kiwi vibe to our campsite, so it’s always good having more Kiwis stay here.

The campsite has been here for many years and we lease it from the council. We’ve recently expanded the accommodation options with eight new riverside cabins. We can have up to 250 people here with 18 cabins, 3 holiday houses, 32 powered sites and 50 non-powered sites.

The business is performing at around about the same level as last year currently, but we hope that when the track is fully open, we’ll see less seasonal curves and a more balanced stream of people coming throughout the year.

With extreme weather events having become more frequent we’ve had some challenging times due to road closures, where our customers just can’t get to us.

Coastal erosion has also affected the campsite – two years ago we had to get a protective wall built, otherwise most of the campground would have been gone by now. The council built the wall but it wasn’t easy getting it done. The wall is doing the job it needs to do now but it is inevitable that it won’t always be adequate.

During a cyclone a couple of years ago, we lost part of the road at Punakaiki and that was just down the road from us. The NZ Transport Agency has since spent millions improving the roads but the bad weather events have become more frequent.

With the most recent bad weather and floods just before Christmas, we probably lost 80-90% of our business during those weeks. People don’t come if they can’t get all the way down to the glaciers. We had the same issue when the bridge was washed out earlier this year. Road closures are definitely the biggest challenge to our business.

Our business is entirely dependent on the natural beauty of the area, so sustainability is very important to us and we work with our community to try and sustain what we have as much as possible.

We run a local event called the Taiko Festival, at the beginning of May, which celebrates the return of the Westland Petrel, an endemic seabird to Punakaiki. We have a concert here at the campsite with Tiki Taane and P Digsss from Shapeshifter playing as part of the 2020 line-up. We have about 1000 people attend and with the proceeds, we’ve been able to work with Conservation Volunteers New Zealand to plant trees as part of a coastal restoration project and purchase traps to help with local pest control initiatives to protect the petrel colony.

We’re very excited about the future of tourism on the West Coast. Especially with all the new tracks opening up like the Old Ghost Road, The Wilderness Trail and there’s planning underway for the Kawatiri Coastal Trail (a $9.63m PGF project), which will be a family-friendly walking and cycle trail connecting the towns of Westport and Charleston.

There are a lot of new outdoor recreational opportunities in the region and we’re excited to be a part of the transformation that is happening with new tourism products coming online on the West Coast. We would much rather create these kinds of opportunities than have large companies ripping up the land trying to extract and sell our natural resources.

As tourism growth continues, Punakaiki is implementing a redevelopment plan (also PGF funded) intended to manage the growth and build new footpaths and cycle lanes to get around the town safely and efficiently. There is also a new information centre and carpark being developed at Dolomite Point, which is a real pressure point currently.

Within the tourism industry, if I could change one thing, it would be the rules around what constitutes a campervan as being self-contained. Self-contained should mean that the toilet must be able to be used all the time.

Recently, locals petitioned and ran a campaign to get freedom camping banned in the Punakaiki community. This happened after the council received funding from the government and a ban was put in place south of Punakaiki and up to 10km north of the town.

Designated freedom camping areas exist on the borders, with a compliance officer making sure the rules are respected, and locals are happy with the solution. But it still could be better if people were only allowed to freedom camp in those areas if they had a real toilet that they always used.

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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Nadine Toe Toe, director at the Bay of Plenty’s Kohutapu Lodge and Tribal Tours – which won the 2019 NZ Tourism Industry Awards’ community engagement category – on authentic cultural experiences, creating opportunities for young people, and the National Geographic initiative that changed lives at Murupara.

My first stint at tourism was straight out of university, working in all the different departments of the Rotorua RTO. I think that experience was what catapulted me to where I am today.

I went on to become the marketing manager at Hell’s Gate and then was shoulder-tapped to become the national sales and marketing manager at Tamaki Tours. I was very lucky to have such great bosses throughout my career. The tourism industry whanau is made up of some amazing people and I was lucky to have learned from some of the best.

As a young Maori woman coming through the tourism industry 20 years ago, there weren’t many Maori women in senior positions. I gained confidence and resilience by being continually encouraged to work harder and rising to every challenge. Through that experience, I built up the courage to step out on my own, with my husband. And we moved out to Murupara and started Kohutapu Lodge and Tribal Tours.

Over the last ten years, the tourism industry has been asking for authentic cultural experiences. They want real, and you can’t get any more real than Murupara.

Through travelling the world via trade shows and trade training I have learned that sometimes you have to look a little bit harder to find the beauty in the places you travel to.

For us, the beauty of Murupara lies in our people, our colourful township and a story of survival – it is real, raw and hard-hitting. Forty years ago, our town was a thriving forestry town, and everyone was employed in forestry and owned their own homes. When jobs became mechanised, the region faced huge unemployment and poverty.

We share the story of our town’s history with visitors and more importantly we share with them the hope that is within our people.

On the outskirts of Murupara, we have the most beautiful landscapes: rivers, lakes, mountains, waterfalls and the most amazing native rainforest in New Zealand – Whirinaki, an ancient podocarp rainforest. There are so many tourism options that could happen out there.

Six years ago, my family moved to Murupara and we started our business. We wanted to support our community, show guests the realities we face as people and the positive impact they can leave behind in communities like ours.

We run guided cultural tours through Ngāti Manawa tribal land. When our visitors arrive we put down a hangi and whilst the kai is cooking we engage them in interactive activities including teaching them the haka, weaving, night-time eel fishing – essentially all the things we try to do to hold on to our culture in a modern world. It is not a show, the experience is hanging out with a modern day Māori family and us sharing our culture.

The community and social responsibility arm of our business is massively important to us. Our product was founded on cultural principles. Ngāti Manawa is a landlocked tribe surrounded by nine other iwi. They used to protect their boundaries so fiercely. Every 100-200m there was a pa site. It is a vast land, and in some areas there were rich resources, and in other areas there were not. The tribe’s chief would rotate the community around the areas that were rich with resources so that everyone was able to benefit. That is how the tribe learned to survive and share the good with the bad. So we could not move out to Murupara and flourish through this tourism opportunity without bringing our community along with us and allowing them to flourish through the benefits of tourism.

We work in partnership with Stray, the bus touring company, who backed our business from the start, transporting visitors to and from Kohutapu Lodge and Tribal Tours and supporting our community and school, enabling school trips for local tamariki. The school is a decile 1 school and many of the Murupara community have not travelled out of the region, so the opportunities that have opened up as a result with Stray have been hugely beneficial.

We are all about creating positive change for our community and have forged many important relationships over the last 5-6 years that have enabled us to do so much more. Air New Zealand has supported us and about a month ago we worked with them to host a National Geographic Photo Camp.

Air New Zealand brought top photographers from around the world out to Murupara – one of five camps that they’re running in New Zealand – and we were able to select 20 kids from our region to learn the art of photography from these world-class photographers. The students learned how to tell their stories through photography which is so powerful. It has given a lot of mana to the community, especially to these young people. The week was fiercely emotional and not only changed the lives of those 20 kids but all of our lives. And I know for a fact that the experience saved lives as well.

Through the National Geographic Photo Camp were able to teach kids about storytelling and photography and also that there is value in what they do and that there are career choices within tourism that they can benefit from. The photos taken by the kids are owned by them and we hope that they will be used in promotional material for a small fee.

We are also very excited to have recently obtained a Department of Conservation concession that will enable us to launch a new product in January called Whirinaki Forest Footsteps. This will be a cultural journey through the Whirinaki. We will share the history, kai, myths and legends of the Jurassic, podocarp rainforest. This is really exciting for us as we will be hiring eight local people to deliver this product for us. It is all about creating local opportunities for our people.

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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Scenic Hotel Group’s managing director, Brendan Taylor, on the upcoming opening of the company’s second Legacy brand hotel in Auckland, the challenges involved with developing a historic site, and the big impending issue faced by hoteliers: the proposed special rates targeted at hotels to fund New Zealand’s desperately needed infrastructure improvements.

Established in 1980 when Californians, Earl Hagaman and Ralph Brown bought a hotel on the West Coast expanded the business nationally, the Scenic Hotel Group now operates 17 hotels in New Zealand and one in Niue. The company has always been a big supporter of the provincial areas of New Zealand and has 4 properties in the North Island and 12 in the South Island.

In the early days we looked towards the overseas wholesalers, especially in the group market. Now we’re catering to a broad range of different market segments: group wholesale, FIT, overseas wholesale or leisure, NZ leisure, corporates, conventions, conferences and special events.

Employing approximately 950 staff, Scenic Hotel Group has three brands: Heartland (3-star), Scenic (4-star) and Legacy (high-end experience).

We’ve been developing the Legacy brand for the last 10 years and are about to launch our second product in Auckland in December. It was established in 2009 with the development of the eco-luxe Te Waonui Forest Retreat in Franz Joseph. The hotel concept was unique for New Zealand with the positioning of all rooms looking into a central rainforest setting. The forest creates privacy between rooms and a relaxing environment for guests. We also introduced a fine dining restaurant where guests can enjoy a degustation menu overlooking the rainforest treetops.

Our second Legacy brand hotel, opening on 1 February is a historic building on Queen Street opposite the Town Hall. We began developing the hotel 14 years ago, buying units that were privately owned to transform into a hotel.

The building was the first major construction after WWII in New Zealand and has historic classifications which have caused a number of issues that we’ve had to work through.

Dealing with the Auckland Council, who insist on our engineers being peer reviewed by independent engineers, meant additional costs that we as developers have to pay for.

We’ve invested $12m-$13m on the exterior of the building and have refurbished the interior, creating spacious rooms that are sympathetic to the historic character of the building. Overall, we’ve invested around $23m in the property and to get a return on our investment we’ve ensured we are delivering a great product that caters to the needs of our high-end visitors.

We are keen to attract corporate and New Zealand leisure travellers as returning guests.

Looking longer term we’re planning to develop a Legacy hotel in Queenstown. We own a current site, an 80-room Heartland product with great views across the lake. The site has the capacity to develop 200-240 rooms and this will likely be a 4-5 year project.

We’ve seen a slowdown in the market this year, particularly with gaps at the front end of the season. Everyone has seen a reduction in the Chinese market, but we saw that last year as well. We believe the Chinese market will come back it’s just a matter of working through some of the processes and political situations.

We have noticed a small downturn in some of the European markets as well but the North American and Australian markets are holding up well.

Our biggest challenge is the councils wanting to bring in bed taxes/special rates. If you look at the Auckland situation, we’re all waiting for the High Court to make a decision on it. When you have a scenario that could take $200,000 – $300,000 off your bottom line profit because the council decides they’re going to tax you, it makes a lot of difference as to whether your business is viable or not.

We have the same issue in Queenstown and Wellington where they are talking about a similar concept. It’s starting to create an issue for hotel owners and some are getting together to formulate an owners’ council – to look after, specifically, the owners’ needs as opposed to the rest of the industry. This is because, unfortunately, the rest of the industry seem to think that the easiest fix to all the lack of infrastructure is to tax the hotels. They want to take the easy way out. It’s a problem that the whole tourism industry has, and the tourism industry needs to stand up and take responsibility and work together to solve it. It’s a work in progress and all part and parcel of the industry growing up.

We all need to think about how we support the infrastructure around New Zealand and work out the most effective way we can help. We all have to admit that what’s happened with local politics is that there’s been a lack of investment in local infrastructure and that it’s not just overseas guests that are creating issues but also New Zealanders moving around the country.

It’s a matter of working through the processes and having some of those conversations to determine how we resolve things moving forward. This is the biggest issue from a hotel owner’s perspective in terms of future developments and being able to achieve a return on future investments.

We need to come up with a model to get the country’s infrastructure moving forward, the more we can achieve that, the more our guests have a good experience – but it means that all the operators need to get involved in the process to make it work. The magic answer is not for the hotels to have to pay for everything.

People refer to the taxes charged overseas in support of their argument, but the issue is that the Auckland targeted rates are not actually taxes, they are rates – so can’t just be added to your bill like GST. It becomes an operational expense.

And you can’t all collude together because if you do, the Commerce Commission will have an issue. It’s a fundamentally flawed system. Instead of councils reacting, as they are, looking for a quick fix, there needs to be a working group looking at the whole problem from a rational, New Zealand perspective.

We’re also working through environmental issues – trying to get rid of plastics from our hotels to make then clean, green and kinder to the environment. Everyone’s looking at their brand standards and trying to find ways to clean things up.

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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Velocity Valley’s managing director, Simon Short, on 21 years of the pioneering ride strategy, the need for more local council investment in tourism, and what he believes is a lack of support and representation for the backpacker and youth sector by Tourism New Zealand.

Velocity Valley is an adventure park in Rotorua. We’ve pioneered all our rides with one exception. We were the first in the world to roll out the Shweeb and develop Jet Sprinting commercially. We were first in New Zealand to produce the Giant Swing – well before any Queenstown operators or North Island-based operations. And finally, we have the first wind tunnel in New Zealand, that has operated for 15 years.

Our market is 65% domestic with the majority being Auckland based. We started 21 years ago with our original ride being the Agrojet. We are currently owned by Steve Hockly, who also owns an engineering business in Upper Hutt called Twin Lakes, and myself.

We employ 15 full-time staff who have become the core of the whole operation. Our aim is to have them all trained to become ‘Master Parkers’ who can operate all the rides and become champions for all the guests that visit.

Our business model involves bringing new and exciting rides to New Zealand and we aren’t changing that model. We will only look at totally unique and pioneering rides to join the VVL portfolio – and I am currently working on just that.

Business has been good up until six months ago, and I see the next six months as being challenging, so more reason to reinvest back into the company.

With having several good years comes a lot of competition, and though we may be seen as a big player we are only a small operation and have to compete with the big boys to get a share in the market.

Compliance isn’t difficult although is very time consuming, especially in our operation where we must comply with Maritime NZ, Bureau Veritas, Worksafe and Qualmark – from which we received Gold accredtitation from the latter.

Rotorua has the greatest community particularly within the tourism industry. However, I do feel that our local council needs to invest more into its biggest asset/employer and its biggest economic earner if it wants to see more development and employment within the city.

One issue we have identified is the massive decline in the backpacker and youth sector. Tourism New Zealand does not have anyone representing this space anymore – why?

Youth travellers may spend less on accommodation, but they stay longer and spend more than the average traveller on activities and experiences across New Zealand.

This is an influential market, but it seems to be now without recognition. Tourism New Zealand stopped actively campaigning to transient backpackers in Australia mid-2017 and this has already seen an impact on our sector and we will continue to see this impact in the coming 12-18 months.

The latest update for the backpacker sector within NewZealand.com on Markets and Stats was updated 19 April 2016 – over three years ago. Is this the value they place on this sector?

If there was one thing I’d like to see change it would be for New Zealand to move closer to the equator so Greta (Thunberg) won’t feel so guilty when she comes to visit us.

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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Gibbston Valley Winery CEO Greg Hunt on a $20m expansion into luxury, the challenges involved, and the need for the industry to protect the beauty that attracts tourists to Queenstown and NZ.

Greg Hunt

Gibbston Valley Winery was established in 1983. We are a winery that is truly embedded within the tourism business, with 150,000 people visiting us each year. For those visitors we have been operating a cellar door, cave tours, daytime restaurant, cheesery and a bike centre. In December this year we are expanding the business significantly, launching world-class luxury accommodation and a spa.

Phil Griffith, the owner of the winery, and myself took over the running of Gibbston Valley in 2010. Within our business plan it was always the intention, at the appropriate time, to introduce accommodation.

Two years ago, we identified that the business was running exceptionally well, and with international flights in and out of Queenstown Airport and the growth of tourism in the area, we felt it was the appropriate time to progress to the next level of development, which was the Lodge, Spa and Villas. We’ve invested more than $20m, construction began last year, and we will open in December this year.

The 5-star accommodation offering is comprised of 24 premium villas, a boutique lodge offering a bar, dining options and additional facilities such as a private tasting room and cellar, and a media room for our wine tourism business.

We will also be launching a concierge service to arrange personalised services for our guests and are investing in premium vehicles to be able to run our visitors around and make sure they have a great time whilst in the region.

Our target market for the new facilities will have symmetry with our existing Wine Club members. The majority of our visitors are from Auckland, the east coast of Australia, China and the west coast of the United States. With increased air connectivity from other US cities we expect this market to expand.

We are striving for at least 80% occupancy. During the first couple of months we will invite agents and media to come and stay and report on their experiences. We’ll also have interest from our Wine Club members and people coming to the summer concerts we host at Gibbston. We’re lucky that with the vibrant Queenstown market we can target a wide range of specific events and activities beyond our own.

Queenstown operates at about 74% occupancy year-round, and at the top end of the market there is a shortage of accommodation. We will attract the wine and food enthusiasts – what we call the ‘good living’ visitors – who are keen to experience fine wine and dining, luxury accommodation, the chance to enjoy walking and biking around the area and unique experiences.

We’re loving the process so far, but if I was to identify any challenges then I would say staffing. The time it takes to hire staff makes things difficult at times, because the work permit and visa processing times can be lengthy. It’s an ongoing challenge faced by the whole of the Queenstown basin. It would be great if the government were to simplify the process and reduce the lengthy approval and processing times.

We don’t have the staff we need available in New Zealand so being able to hire people on work permits and visas is essential. On our construction site, if we didn’t have a team that included many skilled tradespeople from overseas, we wouldn’t be able to meet our deadline.

If I was to give a short summary statement on the tourism industry as a whole, I think there is a need to focus on protecting the appeal that New Zealand has – our scenery and beauty. The clean, green image that New Zealand is renowned for is at risk, and needs to be managed. This is something that is very important to me and the entire team at Gibbston Valley, and it is factored into each business decision we make.

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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New CEO of Ruapehu Alpine Lifts, Jono Dean, on the business expansion to incorporate year round operations, the challenges presented by changing climate and the associated investment in snowmaking, and the skill shortages making it difficult to hire locally. 

RALis a public benefit entity that was formed in 1953, and its primary business is the ski area operations for both Whakapapa, and Turoa which was purchased in 2004. We host 450,000 guests every year in a skiing capacity and provide recreational alpine facilities for those guests.

The business has been evolving since 2017 as we have focused on expanding business opportunities with the board, the New Zealand public and some of our international visitors coming to experience the Tongariro National Park – a UNESCO dual World Heritage site. We’ve made deliberate step-changes within the business to ensure that we showcase the Tongariro National Park as a premier tourism destination in New Zealand.

Our current market is roughly 80% domestic and 20% international. That is set to change in the coming years as we see tourism growth, especially internationally, forecasted to grow year on year. That growth is likely to have an impact on our international visitation to the region and to the southern Waikato and Central Plateau regions.

During the peak of winter, we have 750 employees on the mountain, across Whakapapa and Turoa. Around 700 of those people work on the mountain and 50 people who work in HR, finance, sales and marketing and infrastructure maintenance.

This year is the first time we’ll be running a full summer operation with the Sky Waka Gondola. We will employ a further 75-80 staff across the mountain as a result of the investment in the Sky Waka Gondola in year one. As visitation grows, so will the number of staff required to support that growth.

With the Sky Waka Gondola, we anticipate an additional 130,000 visitors will visit during its first year of operation. By 2025 we anticipate a total visitation of just over half a million people to Whakapapa alone.

In terms of other new products and experiences relating to our summer offering, we’ve just invested $1.6m in our Knoll Ridge Chalet – the restaurant at the top of the gondola. We have incorporated a new buffet restaurant – The Pinnacles Restaurant which opened in the winter season and will play a large part of our overall offering in summer as we extend our daytime hours and include dinner on Friday and Saturday evenings. The views from the restaurant are sensational. Transforming our facilities to enable us to cater to a wide range of visitors, year round has been a big focus in the last 12 months.

As the business has expanded, we’ve had a renewed focus on our food and beverage offering and have incorporated new roles into our business model. We are currently recruiting for an exec chef and a food and beverage team leader.

Another growth area is events and special occasions where we’ve employed an events team leader to drive public and private events business at Knoll Ridge Chalet.

We’ve had a difficult and challenging winter season but our skier days are in line with last year and we expect to finish the year with a similar volume of skiers across the mountain.

The season started with inclement weather through the July school holiday period and the second warmest July that the Central Plateau had ever seen. Coupled with that we then had an 18-day storm for which a period of eight days delivered 1.9 metres of snow. These were extraordinary weather conditions and unfortunately, we had to spend a considerable amount of time digging out and repairing ice damage to reset the business for our ski customers.

Going forward, the weather and our changing climate will be one of our top three challenges – there are a number of factors and variables we have to deal with to open our business each day. With the dramatic impact that weather conditions have had over the last few years we’ve had to ensure that a significant amount of investment – almost $4m – has been spent to help with snowmaking and to develop our snow factory.

We have also been challenged by a skills gap within the region. This poses a significant challenge for us and will continue to do so for a number of years to come. We’ve had to look out of region for people with the skills and expertise we require within specific trades – electricians, fitter/turners, welders and labourers. Obviously, we would love to be recruiting locally but sometimes this isn’t possible.

The skills gap is a key issue and I think the industry needs to ensure that we have a robust learning and development programme locally that we can utilise. We need apprenticeship programmes to be expanded within local polytechnics and learning institutions so that we can create a pipeline of potential candidates that can come and work within our environment.

We have fantastic relationships with all of our stakeholder groups – whether that be from local council, DOC, as the grantor of our concessions, through to our iwi partnerships on both sides of the mountain.

We are incredibly proud of the work that RAL has done on the ground to strengthen these relationships in recent years. They are a pivotal part of our performance and growth and we’ve been fortunate to have a pragmatic approach to a lot of different matters that have arisen over the years with a strength of trust at the forefront of those relationships. We are lucky in terms of the environment that we operate in and the stakeholder groups that we work with on a daily basis. There are professional differences from time to time but ultimately, we work closely to resolve these as soon as possible and to develop ways of working better together to achieve the best outcomes for all groups involved.

Looking at the industry more broadly, one thing I’d like to see change is the development of a greater level of diversity. This is a key target for RAL over the coming years.

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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Rafting New Zealand’s Pianika Boddington on partnering with Ngāti Tūwharetoa, recent PGF funding enabling training courses, the difficult winter season, and the environmental issues that are affecting business.

Pianika Boddington

My husband Luke Boddington and I are co-owners of Rafting New Zealand – a Turangi- based white water rafting company that has been operating since 1991.

Along with Lukes mum and dad we have worked hard over the  last 11 years driving the business forward. We’ve  grown the business through various different ventures nationally. We’ve operated rafting experiences in Rotorua, on the Wairoa and Mohaka Rivers and in Taupo where we opened a store. The tourism industry is very fragile and offers great challenges at times, but from passion and hardwork the business has kept growing.

In February this year we formed a partnership with Lake Rotoaira Forest Trust from Ngāti Tūwharetoa. We created a new company and Ngāti Tūwharetoa own 39% and we are majority shareholders with 51%. We have also brought on two long-time employees, with a 5% shareholding for each.

As a result of the partnership, we have now returned to our roots and will be focusing on operating rafting activities in our rohe (area) We offer grade 1 – 3 rafting experiences: Grade 1 on the Waikato River Float and up to Grade 3+ on the Tongariro River.

It is exciting that Ngati Tuwharetoa’s commercial arm are acquiring an increasing number of  businesses in the tourism industry – offering experiences in our special places. This is exciting and creates job opportunities for Ngati Tuwharetoa descendants and is a part of our role as Kaitiaki (land protectors) as we aspire to provide a prosperous future for our youth today and tomorrow.

We have a staff of 10 during the winter and the team grows to around 20 during the summer.

Our target market are FITs. We have seen an increase in bookings from IBO operators – they seem to be very interested in making bookings outside of the tourist hot spots. Summer has traditionally seen more domestic visitors but we are noticing a change with more international visitors coming to the region.

Winter has been a different story; we’ve had a terrible winter due to the bad weather, with the warmest July on record coinciding with the school holidays. The start of the season saw a lack of snow and then we had a storm cycle for six weeks which saw very few fine days.

The mountain has struggled and so have we, and other tourism operators in the region, as a result of reduced visitors to the area. We’ve not had the usual volume of Australian visitors here and I suspect, from the feedback that we’ve been getting, that will be the case for the next year or two. We’ve heard that many visitors decided to go to Queenstown instead for their skiing and snowboarding.

Weather is by far our biggest challenge.

We’ve recently received $500,000 funding from the PGF to assist us with training river guides and growing our business. We run a 16-week course to train new river guides for the operation, attaining a National Grade 3 Raft Guide Award at the end of the course. We are very grateful for the funding, it’s the first time anything like this has happened for Turangi, and it provides great opportunities for our youth here.

Another set of challenges we face are issues surrounding the environment. We have so much litter along the road side and around our region. I honestly think it has had an effect on declining tourism numbers. We’re a little island on the other side of the world and people think were are pure New Zealand but when they get here, it’s not so pure. I believe this is our biggest struggle that we need to approach as a whole industry. There needs to be more accountability and this needs to be led by council and government.

Another issue we are dealing with in the region is inflated pricing during peak season. We’ve managed to get more tourists here but when they get here the prices are often horrendous. Accommodation providers inflating prices massively over the peak season has definitely affected our region, particularly our domestic market. New Zealanders will find Fiji more affordable than the $300 per night cabins in our region.

Overall, I’d like to see our government and councils leading change in educating people in schools and in the community about the environment and legislating how we can take care of it. Regarding the worsening litter issue, I believe there should be fines.

The Tiaki Promise that Tourism New Zealand have introduced is awesome and I think it should be embraced by everyone. I think the tiaki focus should be on the environment and looking after it for future generations but also it should be about us all looking after each other, within the Tourism Industry. It is a competitive market, but we are a small island and I think everyone should look after each other and working together. Tiaki Tatou. Mariora!

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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Recently opened Middle Hill Mountain Bike Park’s co-owner, Genevieve King, on the launch of the park’s network of downhill trails, earthquake tourism opportunities, future plans to offer accommodation, hiking, parasailing shuttles and collaboration with nearby Clarence River Rafting.

Middle Hill Mountain Bike Park has been a passion project that my partner, experienced trail builder Morgan Rigby, and I have been working hard on with a core crew of local friends and mountain bike enthusiasts – the Middle Hill Shredders Association – for over a year.

Together we’ve built a network of intermediate to advanced, predominantly downhill, mountain bike trails on my family’s farm near Clarence, about 40kms north of Kaikoura.

Morgan Rigby gets some air. Image: Roy Schott

Middle Hill Mountain Bike Park is targeted towards the domestic market with adventurous intermediate to advanced mountain bikers being the main market. We plan to see how the first year goes and then possibly expand our marketing to reach international visitors.

We are focused on attracting adventurous mountain bikers and offering them shuttle services up to the top of the hillside which offers 450 metres of vertical descent. We don’t offer rentals or coaching at this stage – we’re focused on providing a quiet, chilled atmosphere for established mountain bikers with beers in the Woolshed afterwards with a relaxed Kiwi vibe.

The Middle Hill farmland terrain, devastated and uplifted by 12 metres in some places by the Kaikoura earthquake, lends itself to more challenging trails. The fault line ripped through the farmland destroying every single building on the farm, but in one fortuitous instance opened up a large crack where I’d previously been building a track – my work had been further designed and developed by a natural disaster!

Since the massive impact the earthquake had on us, we’ve had three years of rebuilding with lots of help from so many people. We’ve looked into earthquake tourism opportunities and had a coach tour of people who came to look at, and learn about, the massive uplift on the farm.

The mountain biking park wouldn’t be here without the earthquake, it’s funny how these things eventuate – it provided opportunities. After the quake, I won the contract to cook for 30 roadworkers who were living in Clarence. This work enabled Morgan and I to buy a digger and begin working on developing the mountain bike park.

We have designed and developed a range of machine built top-to-bottom intermediate trails as well as more advanced hand-built technical trails. Our network has tracks suitable for all levels of experience; we have six tracks completed so far with quite a few more in the pipeline.

We haven’t set hard and fast targets for the mountain biking operation – it’s very early days. We have not received any funding but that might be something we look at to increase the trail network for future.

We have multiple future business expansion plans to offer shuttles to paragliders, open up hiking opportunities and we’re looking at offering accommodation. We will also be collaborating with nearby Clarence River Rafting, working with them to offer visitors multiple experiences close by and encouraging them to stay longer. We want to keep the park niche – offering personalised experiences to groups of between 4-20 people at a time.

We anticipate our main challenges will be the weather. We’re on one side of a creek that occasionally floods so there may be a few days where we can’t operate but that’s the same with any adventure operation. And although we’re not near a main centre, we’re near enough for Nelson, Christchurch and Wellington mountain bikers to get to us.

I have previous tourism industry experience having worked in the ski industry, as a rafting guide with Clarence River Rafting and in hospitality – all of which have provided valuable skills that are well suited to the park.

Our marketing is primarily via our website, Facebook, Instagram and mostly word of mouth at this early stage of operation. Before we opened the park to the public last weekend, we hosted a successful industry day and invited pro riders, media and shop owners to come and experience the park and the media exposure from that was expansive.

The pricing we have established is based on similar mountain biking experiences. Although we do position ourselves as a boutique operation, offering unique and personal experiences, we wanted to ensure our pricing was affordable and competitive. Many people have compared our experience to the Wairoa Gorge Mountain Biking Park, and our pricing is similar.

Our dealings with the tourism industry are just beginning but one thing I’d like to see change within the industry as a whole is the implementation of an arrivals fee for people who intend to freedom camp. Living on the Kaikoura coast there are not enough public toilets and that causes a lot of problems. I think it’s great that there is so much access to the outdoors in New Zealand, but I think we should be charging on arrival to help out with the huge costs associated.

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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Look After Me founder Julia Anne (formerly Charity) on expanding her homestay business into tours and events, navigating the challenges of NZ’s shared access economy, and being one of the few female tech entrepreneurs in the tourism industry.

Look After Me is a homestay network that has provided 17,500 guest nights since it was founded in 2011, just prior to the World Cup. We help homeowners rent out one, two or three guestrooms. Our customers are people looking for short-term stays in beautiful accommodation hosted by genuine people who provide exceptional hospitality.

Our core market is baby boomers, mainly retired women and mostly domestic (70-80%). We don’t have the marketing budget to be able to reach the international market, however, we do get interest from international visitors when they are here as they want to meet local people and enjoy kiwi experiences. Homestays are an ideal way to share the manaakitanga (welcome and hospitality) that Kiwis are known for.

Our headquarters are in Dunedin, with a new branch opening in Rotorua in 2020. We have a team of eight. I own 67% of the business, and there are two co-directors who own 5% each – Colin MacPhee and Mike Johnson. We also have a small group of shareholders who own 23%.

The Look After Me accommodation network has helped support many events around New Zealand: The Rugby World Cup, Cricket World Cup, WOMAD in New Plymouth, World of Wearable Arts in Wellington, Field Days in Hamilton and big concerts like Ed Sheeran, Pink, the Eagles and will be also supporting Elton John and Queen in Dunedin.

We’ve established homestay options on 15 the 20 New Zealand cycle trails and assist administrative professionals organising short term accommodation for visiting guests, particularly universities and polytechnics.

We are expanding the business with the addition of tours and events joining the accommodation network. The tours will take people to events all around the country and focus on creative journeys involving literature and writing, clay, art, yarn and photography.

We will be launching from Christchurch initially. The tours will take people by bus to Dunedin for a 3-, 4- or 5-day workshop event with homestay accommodation, meals and the chance to engage with local people with similar interests as part of the experience.

We have plans to expand the tours all over the country and potentially the world. The Look After Me concept is based on good old New Zealand hospitality at its core but can be achieved anywhere. We are currently seeking investment to explore the international expansion opportunity.

Marketing is a big challenge for us, but we’ve discovered through research and upgrading our offering to tours and events that our best customers are mature, middle-aged and retired women who are looking for a great in-home experience in beautifully clean accommodation that has been checked and vetted to meet our high standards. Our brand promise of ‘looking after you’ is perfectly suited to this market, as taking care of people is at the centre of everything we do.

With our events strategy focusing on creative industries, we may be eligible for event or creative funding – we’re currently in the process of applying.

I’m a real proponent of the shared access economy, which globally has grown 200% year-on-year. Look After Me was recently identified by a New Zealand business magazine as a pioneer of the shared access economy in this country.

It has largely been left to Airbnb to come into the market here, but there aren’t the regulations that I feel should be in place. Anyone can rent anything and there have been some poor experiences which reflect on brand New Zealand.

As a pioneer in the shared access economy space in New Zealand, I would be more than happy to lead the kind of regulatory environment that needs to be established. I’ve been talking with councils about how we can use our software to account for visitor nights and help uphold high standards of hospitality. Quality is very important to us and our customers.

The tourism industry in New Zealand stands unified. I’m a great subscriber to Martin Snedden’s belief that we are a small country and a small industry globally and we should be unifying New Zealand Inc and how can we best support each other. Largely that is the case but there are pockets of protectionism, as with any industry, but I’m an advocate for unifying the New Zealand brand. Tourism New Zealand has done a fantastic job in that space, but I do urge and encourage tourism operators to embrace unification, to continue to put New Zealand on the world stage as number one in the world (together with Iceland) for how we treat our visitors.

Back in 2011, I felt a fair amount of resistance when introducing a concept that shared wealth among ordinary New Zealanders. Look After Me was seen by some as a threat. I don’t see out offering as a threat to already established businesses, as our homestays offer a connection with local people that guests wouldn’t otherwise get. The desire and demand for those local connections and experiences are ever-increasing, and we are able to fulfil that need.

As one of a small number of female tech entrepreneurs in the tourism industry, I’ve received some great support from my peers but also resistance via some old paradigms. Taking a leadership position for a new way of thinking, in a very male-dominated industry has had its challenges, but I’ve navigated them because I believe women deserve to travel, have fulfilling experiences while feeling safe to do so.

It is an exciting time for the industry. I know we’ve got some challenges, but I think that the shared access economy can provide some key solutions to infrastructural issues that New Zealand has been grappling with, like distribution, seasonality, supply issues against the backdrop of an ageing, more technologically savvy population.

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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Red Barn’s Bridgette O’Sullivan on the diversification and expansion of her and her husband’s wedding and events business, launching into the tourism sector and catering to group tours and the luxury market.  

Located on a hilltop within 500 acres of a Hinuera Valley dairy farm, the Red Barn is a recently renovated and refurbished wedding and event venue that we have been operating for the past 10 years.

My husband, ex-jockey Lance, and I own the farm and the business. The Red Barn was on the land when we purchased it 12 years ago and we didn’t do anything with it for a couple of years but then decided we would turn it into a commercial venue.

During the last two seasons, we’ve expanded the business into the tourism sector, taking group bookings through inbound operators for morning and afternoon teas, lunches and farm tours. We’ve recently launched a whole new high-end experience which will grow our business further.

Taste of Waikato came about as a result of the relationships that we’ve built over the years with many local producers. We have some amazing food and wine producers in the area who are incredibly passionate about what they do, and we felt we could bring this all together to tell the Waikato food and wine story.

Keeping it local and authentic was important to us and the pasture to plate theme is something that is very on trend at the moment, so we incorporated that and put together a six-course degustation with wine matches. We showcase some of the finest artisan food from around the region and can cater for groups of 20-50 people.

We’ve also created some interactive experiences which give tourists the opportunity to roll up their sleeves, get involved and have some fun. Visitors can have a go at butter churning, plating a meal and can test their culinary skills guessing meal ingredients.

Most of our customers are locals for the weddings and corporate events, and The Taste of Waikato is aimed at the group tourism sector, and we have international visitors booked for this summer from the cruise ship market.

Going forward we hope to grow the international visitors via the food and wine experiences and farm tours. It’s a high-end product in a beautiful setting as well as being fun and interactive. The aim is to give international guests a glimpse of our culture, who we are and what we do.

Our business is growing: the weddings and events side of the business is always fully booked throughout the summer, and we will be again for next summer. And we’re really pleased that our tour numbers have doubled from last year.

We’ve recently employed more people to accommodate the growth and we’re ramping up the team and hiring a new chef to work alongside our two existing chefs, as well as a projects, operations and business development manager, and additional wait staff. In summer, we employ up to 20 people and in the off-season, we have five full-time staff.

Business growth can be quite scary for some people within an organisation. I think it’s really important to communicate the vision and plan for growth to our team. If we didn’t do a good job of that we would risk ruffling a lot of feathers with bringing new people on board. There are always challenges with growth, but I believe that it is all about effective communication and keeping everyone in the loop and heading towards the same goals.

We did our first year at TRENZ this year and that was very successful in helping us grow the tours, especially to the cruise ship market. Building connections, word of mouth, direct marketing and a little bit of social media marketing have been successful marketing channels for us.

I haven’t been in the tourism industry that long, but I think that a successful industry future relies on us providing quality experiences – and the love and care that visitors receive is really important. Also being able to provide high-end experiences is important as we’re getting more and more visitors that can afford and want luxury experiences.

If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact the Ticker’s Jane King at jane@tourismticker.com.

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EcoZip Adventures’ managing director, Gavin Oliver, on building a sustainable business with conservation at its heart, making it easy for visitors to give back, and developing campaigns to attract more domestic travellers during the shoulder seasons.

EcoZip Adventures on Waiheke Island was born in 2012 when my business partner Chris Hollister and I came to New Zealand, fell in love with the place and felt that the natural beauty on Auckland’s doorstep was somewhat unappreciated. We set about trying to remedy that with a business opportunity.

Neither of us had former tourism industry experience and, initially, we had no idea how we were going to achieve this, but we were intent on developing a business that attracted a broad demographic, got people off the tour buses and into the bush, and most importantly, had conservation at its heart.

After much research and consideration, we decided on ziplines and embarked on developing EcoZip Adventures on Waiheke Island.

We have a team of approximately 30 people during the summer months and this reduces to around 12 in winter.

EcoZip Adventures offers nature lovers and adventurers a great fun experience with incredible views as they fly over a working vineyard and forest – with vistas across Waiheke Island out to the Hauraki Gulf and Auckland City. The experience offers state-of-the-art flying-fox ziplines and an eco-immersive forest walk.

It was our intention to attract a very broad age range: people from age 8 – 88. We exceeded in that and managed to attract people from 5 – 95 years. Our customers span all levels of physical ability.

We recently ensured that a woman diagnosed with MS was able to get out there and enjoy the ziplining experience with her walking frame when needed. We’re not about turning people away, we’re about empowering people.

We attract a lot of families and groups. We recently had 4 generations of one family celebrating their grandmother’s 85^thbirthday.

As part of our conservation ethic and our commitment to being a truly sustainable business, we have partnered with the Waiheke Resources Trust to help plant native trees across the island.

We offer our customers the ability to donate towards purchasing the native trees when they make a booking with us. When we switched on the ability to donate, within hours visitors were buying trees. I was blown away by the response. Many visitors want to do their bit for the environment and contribute where they can – making it easy for them to do so is really paying off.

When we started the business, we were seeing 80% domestic and 20% international visitors, now we are seeing a 50/50 split.

Our main markets are Australia, North America, the UK and Northern Europe. We’re also seeing some growth in Chinese and Korean visitors.

There are challenges for us attracting more Asian visitors as Waiheke used to be considered primarily a wine-tourism destination; a perception that’s slowly changing. Also, a lot of Chinese visitors when they decide to visit New Zealand, target just the South Island. So that’s one of the challenges for our region, to attract more visitors from these markets.

Until a few years ago Waiheke Island was mostly vineyards and baches. As the tourism industry has developed there are a lot more operators offering activities and experiences, which has made a difference to the type of people that come here.

Our biggest challenge, as reflected in the wider industry, is seasonality. In the depths of winter, it is tough. We have a full-time team of staff we need to pay and that’s a challenge. Having said that, we’ve been very successful in strengthening the shoulder seasons through campaign work we’ve done, specifically targeting domestic travellers.

With 1.6 million Aucklanders residing 17 km away, some of which have never been out into the Hauraki Gulf, the domestic market is very important to us. Our campaign work helped us break records for our business with what have traditionally been ‘cost recovery months’ becoming profitable. We’re continuing to invest in these campaigns and are seeing encouraging results.

We are very fortunate that 65% of our business comes direct. The OTA market has been growing at a rapid rate, and whilst we’ve seen some of the traditional channels – the likes of wholesalers and retail partners – holding firm, we’ve also seen exponential growth in the OTA sector. That comes at a cost because they demand high commission rates, but with a strong digital strategy, the CTA comes down.

OTA’s bring significant reach and when you’re a small business like us with a relatively modest marketing budget, there’s a limited amount we can do in our own right.

We’ve partnered with Viator and they enable reach we could never achieve on your own. We were fortunate that they took a chance on us on as a supplier when we were a very new business. We do a lot with them and have a brilliant relationship.

The same is true with Booking.com who are moving more into the activity space. They’re responsive, move quickly, get things done and do what they say they’re going to do – so I’m not against paying their commissions.

The business has seen huge growth over the last few years and winning the TECNZ Small Business Operator of the Year award in 2018 gave us a great deal of visibility that possibly we hadn’t had before.

About 5 or 6 years ago, we spoke to an ITO and explained that we’d been trying to work with them and not getting a huge amount of traction. They responded saying they were inundated with new product and wanted to see evidence of our business longevity before working with us. It was a case of having to prove ourselves before establishing ITO working relationships and took a long time.

So now, when people say ‘look at what you’ve achieved – you’ve done so well,’ I remind them that it has taken years and years to become an overnight success.

Gavin Oliver spoke to Jane King for this column. If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact jane@tourismticker.com.

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Imperium Group’s James Cavanagh, general manager at Eichardt’s Private Hotel and The Spire, on the changing demands of the luxury market and the challenges Queenstown faces with insufficient infrastructure and staffing.   

The Imperium Group offer a collection of luxury, boutique properties, comprising Eichardt’s Private Hotel, The Spire Hotel, and a collection of villa properties in the Queenstown region as well as Pacific Jemm – an 80-foot luxury yacht that offers cruises on Lake Wakatipu.

The historic Eichardt’s Hotel has been around since the 1870s, in its current format since 2001, and under Imperium ownership since December 2010. The Spire Hotel was added to the group in 2014, and Pacific Jemm in July 2018. The Elms at Lake Hayes is a relatively new villa offering and was added in December 2018.

The Imperium Group is owned by Andrew Cox who is originally from Christchurch but based in Melbourne. The group has many different ventures in Australia. We are the main hospitality operation in Queenstown and are 100% lux. During peak times we employ approximately 100 staff working across our hospitality business.

Our customers are predominantly from North America and Australia, focussed seasonally with the US travelling here in summer and the Australian market in winter. Our restaurants and bars see a cross section of all of Queenstown’s visitors, from all over the world – and also a lot of domestic New Zealanders.

Through the summer months, the majority of customers are from North America, with a few from Europe and some South American visitors – from Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. The South American market is growing with air connectivity via Air New Zealand’s direct flights assisting this growth.

New Zealand appeals to young South Americans who are adventurous travellers. They love the outdoors, climate and the clean and green environment that they don’t necessarily have at home. Mexicans, in particular, enjoy our urban destinations. We see honeymooning couples staying in Queenstown luxury lodges – young twenty-somethings from Mexico City who enjoy the urban vibrancy of Queenstown.

In the summer months, northern hemisphere visitors make up around 85% of our market, with 10% Australian and 5% from other countries. We don’t get a lot of domestic customers but sometimes see couples from Auckland or Christchurch on weekend breaks. We see a regular core of visitors from Australia that come to Queenstown to avoid the heat of the Aussie summer. The Australian ‘celeb’ market is pretty big in Queenstown with media and sports personalities and we see a lot of them in our restaurants – many have holiday homes here.

In winter our customers are 85% Australian – they come to ski, with a smaller proportion of North Americans. The North American market in winter is growing as it’s their summer holidays and main vacation time.

Year round we see around 42% Australian, 40% North American and a mix of Latin American, European and Asian visitors – mostly from Hong Kong and Singapore as opposed to mainland China.

In general, with the luxury market, we attract an older demographic – people who have been around a bit longer and accumulated a bit more wealth. The older demographic generally enjoy soaking up the atmosphere and the remote peacefulness as opposed to the adventure activities. The Spire has more of a mix of the younger, hip sector – urban cool getaways, the crowd that hit New York and San Francisco.

We’re getting more and more extended family visits, particularly from the North American market – often with three generations coming over to spend time together. One of the great things about New Zealand as a destination is that we’ve got something for everyone. The different generations can have a great day out and reconvene at the end of the day, having had very different and valuable experiences.

There is a growing demand, particularly from the North Americans with extended families, for villas. Having become familiar with the European villa experience, these customers are looking for similar options wherever they travel in the world.

We’re excited to have added The Elms on Lake Hayes villas to our portfolio of properties (since Dec 2018). The Elms have a unique and world class location on the shores of Lake Hayes overlooking Coronet Peak and The Remarkables. They are separate villas that offer the flexibility of being completely private or connected via a central foyer. We integrate the full hotel services into our villa accommodation options, unlike basic villa rental offerings, offering daily housekeeping, a concierge/butler, and private chefs if required. To be able to offer that quality of product in New Zealand is fantastic.

Our winter is looking strong so far. We’re very pleased with what we’re seeing currently. Accommodation demand is up on the prior year (although slower growth than seen over previous five years), and we’re delighted to be one of the better performing hotel operations in the region in this regard. There have been a lot of new openings at the lower/middle end of the market.

As general manager, I am focused on maintaining the growth we’ve enjoyed over the last five years. Queenstown as a region is seeing signs that there is potentially a softening, as other markets are coming online and there are alternative accommodation choices. For us, it’s about maintaining our market position, maintaining our quality, and being evangelical about our high service levels and quality of product. People can stay anywhere, and we want to make sure we are top of mind.

New Zealand, in general, has enjoyed a fantastic 5-6 years, and credit to Tourism New Zealand for the work they do internationally. They are constantly winning recognition as a market-leading tourism board. Whenever I attend trade shows in Europe and the US, Tourism New Zealand is certainly one of the ‘must have’ appointments for international operators. They have helped support us at the coalface and we’re very fortunate to have such a proactive and outstanding tourism board who do a great job flying our flag.

When I, and other lodge operators, are travelling overseas, we’re flying the flag for the New Zealand brand first and foremost. We’re looking to ensure that New Zealand is the destination of choice and from then on consumers will filter to wherever they need to be – to what is best-suited to them. From our perspective, if brand New Zealand is strong then we’ll win in the end. As the region grows, so does the demand for staff. And this is another key challenge for us.

Queenstown as a region is staffed at about 90% by international workers. In our business, within 100 staff members, there are probably 8 or 9 Kiwis (born and bred – as well as naturalised expats). We need help from Immigration NZ to speed up the visa processing times for our international staff, to think outside the square to help us deliver and to make sure we’ve got staff to open the doors every morning. There are businesses out there, pubs in town, that have said they’ve had to shut for three days because they didn’t have enough staff.

We often hire international staff on working holiday visas which are valid for a year. After that year the staff member needs to transfer to a sponsored visa. When we submit an application for a sponsored visa, Immigration NZ responds and tells us that the likely processing time will be 10-12 weeks. If that staff member’s visa runs out in the meantime, they’ll often leave the country because they can’t work.

As well as slow visa processing times we also have challenges with Immigration NZ declining visas after making a judgement about whether the staff member has the relevant skills and experience to do the job.

When we as operators train someone and want to promote them, we ought to have the ability to do so. It’s our skin in the game. If our staff don’t perform, then our business will suffer, so let us make that call as operators. There needs to be a little bit more vision from immigration officials about that type of situation. This is changing in the near future with Accredited Employer Status, but that may be costly for smaller businesses.

The things I’d like to see change in the industry are: a focus on quality over quantity – both in terms of the product and the target markets – and incentives to get more young New Zealanders into the industry to ensure we’re delivering a world-class Kiwi experience.

Visitors want to speak to Kiwis, and they want to hear our stories. I don’t have the solution but would love to see more Kiwis. I think it needs to be a challenge for the government in terms of focusing their training incentives to try and get more young Kiwis into the industry.

James Cavanagh spoke to Jane King for this column. If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact jane@tourismticker.com.

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Dive! Tutukaka’s Jeroen Jongejans on 27 years in the diving business, the environmental sustainability challenges, and the importance of a commitment to destination development.

Jeroen Jongejans

The Dive Tutukaka business was formed 20 years ago by the amalgamation of a couple of dive operators in the Tutukaka area. Through amalgamating the businesses, we became large enough to stop marketing ourselves separately and focus on marketing as a destination. This proved to be a really successful strategy.

With a team of 65 staff during the high season and around 10 staff during the winter months, the business delivers two different products. We offer world class diving experiences for the global diving fraternity and a ‘Perfect Day Ocean Cruise’ for non-divers, snorkellers, kayakers and sightseers.

We’ve just opened our new and improved dive shop which is focused on delivering improved customer service, better opportunities for our staff and a better environment to work in. Moving to the new shop has kept us very busy and we are excited about the improvements we can now offer our customers.

Our customers are 50% domestic and 50% from international markets. We have visitors from 50 – 60 different countries with the bulk of our international customers coming from European countries: Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Italy. We also have customers from the US and Canada and we’re starting to see more from China and India.

Diving is a niche product but fortunately, it’s a large niche. The diving fraternity travels all around the world to tick off the top diving destinations from their bucket lists. The Poor Knights Islands are internationally renowned as an iconic diving destination, so we have year-round demand from customers whose travel plans are generally not affected by economic downturns. We are very fortunate in that sense.

We’re like any other small to medium sized tourism operation – we have a lot of challenges. Seasonality is one of our main challenges and we’ve worked hard to broaden the shoulder seasons a little. There is also the challenge of visitor dispersal. As the number of visitors to New Zealand increases, we’re not necessarily seeing the spectacular percentage growth of visitors through the regions.

Northland as a region is a unique proposition. Getting more visitors to come here is dependent on marketing and destination development – an aspect we’re focusing on in our new strategy. Regional destination development is really important and at the moment it seems to be a bit of a haphazard process as to how destinations get developed.

We’ve also worked hard over that time to slowly build up the awareness of people about the Poor Knights Islands. That awareness is now established in New Zealand and around the world, but there was never a clear strategy from a local or regional government department focused on developing destinations around Northland.

It’s usually the operators who take on a fair amount of risk and put a lot of work into assisting with destination development. The operators often reap the rewards but the whole community does too. People don’t quite understand what it takes to develop a destination. There are so many aspects to it. Elements like the awareness of touring routes, the awareness of the wholesalers that make the bookings, the quality of the roading, the delivery of an excellent experience when people get here.

When we started the business, 20 years ago, we were committed to ensuring an excellent experience for visitors seven days a week. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be open all the time – especially during the winter – but it’s part of what we deliver. We ensure that people will never be disappointed.

Most businesses make money 3-4 months of the year, break even 3-4 months of the year and lose money 3-4 months of the year. That’s just part and parcel of the commitment you make to the industry, your staff and to the community. Our boats are completely full for about 3-4 weeks in summer and in winter, very occasionally, we’ll take one person out – which works out as a very lucky day for them. It’s always a bit of a juggle, but you have to take a punt, make it work and look at different strategies to get more clients. There’s a lot of maintenance required for our business and winter time is suitable for that.

The challenges with seasonality are focused around retaining quality and getting the right people on board who understand the product and can deliver an excellent experience. We’re fortunate with staffing in that we’re a sexy industry. The diving industry is an exciting one, and we find there are students, who are qualified dive instructors, that are keen to work in conjunction with their study through the summertime. We often get marine biology students who are very intelligent and passionate about the environment working with us so we’re very lucky – and they often return to work with us in subsequent years.

We’re committed to providing opportunities for our local community and have developed an initiative for young people to gain experience and get into the diving industry. Dive Tutukaka has an arrangement with the local schools (during the summer months) offering students jobs as wash crew for 3-4 hours after school. The students help with general duties after the boats return each day. They help wash the wetsuits, carrying the oxygen tanks and put gear and equipment away after the trip.

If the students show interest, we help them develop their diving skills, assist them to get their diver’s ticket and then they are able to come out and help on our boats, gaining experience and an understanding of our company culture. Some students go on to become diving instructors and skippers. We’ve seen quite a few students who started as wash crew excel to the superyacht industry as captains and senior officers. And the nice thing about that is that we remain one big whanau. The initiative works beautifully and seeing our young people develop fills us with pride.

Having been in business for 27 years, I’m now starting to see the next generation coming through as well – the children of students who started out with us – which is great. We’re not an ordinary business. Whilst profit building is very important to keep things going, so is our social commitment to our community and to the environment.

Another key challenge is the environment. As population growth continues to increase, the impact on the planet and the oceans has been destructive. The volume of plastic, nitrogen and rubbish that makes it into the ocean is detrimental.

Over the last decade, as well as pollution, we’ve seen changes in weather patterns, fishing practices and the levels of acidification of the ocean all combine to create even more risk to our marine environment. The ocean is a great absorber of carbon dioxide, but the ecosystem needs to be healthy and the health of our oceans is rapidly deteriorating. We’ve been looking at the impact of over-fishing with certain species and the ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, that people have – and the reality is it’s never been right.

We have been very strong supporters of increasing the protection of our marine environment. When we started 20 years ago the Poor Knights Islands were only 5% protected, and now they have 100% protection.

Looking more broadly, a recent study on the state of the oceans, published by academics from the University of York, Oxford University and Greenpeace, concluded that to regain adequate levels of health in the oceans we need to protect 30% of waters by 2030. In New Zealand, only 4% of our ocean is currently protected. There is so much more work we need to do.

There is huge potential for developing new marine products in New Zealand but unfortunately, there is no ministry for marine protection or a clear strategy for marine protection to lead the way to sustainable growth.

A strategic overarching approach is needed from central government and this is something we would really like to see a commitment to. It would be revolutionary if we could all stop working in silos, take a global view on what changes need to be made and put plans in place to protect 30% of New Zealand’s oceans by 2025. We need to lead, innovate and become good ancestors.

Jeroen Jongejans spoke to the Ticker‘s Jane King. If you’d like to contribute to our An Operator’s View column, contact jane@tourismticker.com.

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After being nominated for a BOP ExportNZ award for best emerging business, Manaaki Adventures and Manaaki Rugby Tours’ cofounder Dan Meade talks about developing his tours and a new, unique product created by working with the Crusaders.

Dan Meade

My background is in physical education. I was a PE and outdoor education teacher at Hamilton Boys’ High School. I co-founded Manaaki Adventures back in 2013 with Hemi Coates – we were both experienced outdoor and physical education teachers. We started off small, working with international students studying at schools in the Hamilton region and taking them on trips to the snow for the weekend.

Between 2015 and 2017, Hemi and I have both been putting a lot more time and effort into growing the business. We’ve got a small team. I do quite a lot of guiding with one other full-time guide who works during the summer season. We also work with a pool of contract guides to deliver our tours nationwide. And we’ve also got agents in New Zealand and throughout the world to help promote and sell our tours.

Manaaki Adventures is focused on education, adventure, service culture and sports tours for the student market, although we have run a few family tours. Manaaki Rugby Tours offers nationwide rugby tours for teams from around the world. The tours are fully customised and we can cater to all age and skill levels.

We have a close working relationship with the Crusaders International High Performance Unit (IHPU), which means we can take our rugby touring teams to train at the world-class Crusaders’ facility in Christchurch.

Our rugby tours provide an insight into the workings of the most successful Super Rugby franchise in the 21-year history of the competition, as well as the chance to experience high performance coaching from IHPU coaches. It’s a unique and exciting experience to be able to offer to international teams.

Our tours are customised to suit the wants and needs of the visiting teams. As well as tapping into the Crusaders IHPU, we also have other IRB level 3 coaches that we work with. We organise coaching, training sessions and games against local and national teams.

We also offer a taste of New Zealand culture, with adventure and authentic Maori cultural experiences and activities incorporated into the tour itineraries.

We’ve had teams from all over the world. In April, we ran a tour for 49 players and 6 staff from Brisbane High School. They trained at the Crusaders’ facility and played 4 games in Christchurch, Dunedin and Queenstown.

We also had an Argentinian High School team that visited and toured the North Island, a Thai rugby team, and a professional Japanese women’s sevens team.

We have a really strong product offering and our primary challenge is gaining exposure to the right markets and creating partnerships. Promoting our products to the right people is something we’re working hard on.

We’ve been to TRENZ for the last two years and developed some good relationships there. We have partnerships with travel companies in market as well as receiving some direct bookings. We’re really keen to start exploring further opportunities with NZTE and see how we could cooperate with them to get into the right markets.

We also have independent agents, positioned around the world, promoting our products and our philosophy and forging B2B and direct connections for us.

The Potama Trust and New Zealand Maori Tourism have given us great support in developing our business. Jason Baker from TRNZ was a great help to us initially. We worked with him to establish our networks and relationships with travel partners. The Tourism Export Council have been also been a good organisation to be part of.

We’ve had a really good summer with February – April being busy for us. Last year we had a strong September to December. We’re working hard to try and improve interest in the low season, especially with our rugby tours. Winter is a great time for teams to be touring the country with Kiwi teams looking for games.

We’re relatively new to the tourism industry, and our backgrounds are based in education – so we’re learning as we go. But we’re finding it a very welcoming and cooperative industry which I’m really enjoying. And we’re excited to have been nominated for the Bay of Plenty ExportNZ business awards for best emerging business.

Dan Meade spoke to Jane King for this column. If you’d like to be considered for our An Operator’s View column, contact jane@tourismticker.com.

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