TRENZ conference: Launch of online tool part of ‘tourism for future’

Tourism Industry Aotearoa is launching a new online tool to help businesses become more sustainable.

Tourism leaders are discussing the major issues and opportunities facing the sector during the annual TRENZ conference in Wellington this week.

Tourism Industry Aotearoa chief executive Rebecca Ingram said the future of tourism would not look like the past.

Akiaki – Advancing Tourism was an online tool to make it easier for businesses to learn about sustainability, she said.

“Bouncing back to 2019 is not part of our vernacular.

“Rather we are focused on purposefully creating a resilient and sustainable industry that delivers for the country, our people, our environment and the visitor.”

It will offer video presentations, case studies and interactive activities in modules, which will be rolled out to members from the middle of this year.

Late last year, the industry launched its roadmap for the next 30 years, and Ingram said they were starting to put their plan into action.

“By making it easier for businesses to upskill, we are designing tourism for the future and taking the blueprint from a document in a drawer – to the real world,” Ingram said.

The learning hub received funding from Te Pūkenga, in partnership with Grow Tourism.

Some businesses are already putting conservation at the centre of what they do.

In Wellington, Zealandia Te Māra a Tanē chief executive Danielle Shanahan said it had a fully fenced ecosanctuary that was providing a safe space to reintroduce native wildlife back into the area.

In the 1990s, there were only 30 pairs of tūī and no kākā in Wellington.

But kākā were reintroduced to Zealandia’s ecosanctuary in 2001.

“By 2010, they were starting to explore beyond the fence … and by 2015, they’re nesting in people’s backyards,” she said.

“And today, they are again one of the most common species that we can see in our parks and backyards.”

Their conservation efforts were helping to reintroduce native wildlife back into the area, Shanahan said.

“My generation grew up without kākā, without tūī. To my nieces and nephews, to many of your children, these birds are everywhere around them.”

Kohutapu Lodge & Tribal Tours owner Nadine Toe Toe was focusing on rangatahi.

She was offering cultural exchanges – with industry backing – for rangatahi to travel to other indigenous communities around the world.

“Sustainability is fiercely important and we need to continue to nurture our environment and plant those trees. My whakaaro here is who is going to look after those trees in the future.

“We need to make sure that our young people are well equipped to deal with some of the issues that the taiao, our environment is facing and it’s our job to make sure that we give them the tools to do so.”

She was already seeing a difference.

Christchurch Airport started measuring its carbon in 2006.

Chief executive Justin Watson said it had made good progress on reducing their emissions since then and has started work on a renewable energy precinct, but there were more challenges ahead.

“They’ll get there with the aircraft. They’ll sort the engine and that will work. The hardest thing is the government’s regulatory settings, civil aviation settings, anything like this – there’s a risk adverse approach to this, and then how do you fund it?”

Tourism and Hospitality Minister Matt Doocey said the industry has had a bad rep.

“At times, tourism has actually been seen as a threat to conservation by people in conservation. You know tourists aren’t a predator,” Doocey said.

He would be working closely with the Conservation Minister.

“How do we better resource conservation? But actually, how do we tell our conservation story a lot better as well. Cos when you think about reasons for people travelling to New Zealand, it is our biodiversity, it is our outdoors, our natural resources.”