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| |11.11.2008|24.11.2008| |
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| Waikato tourism needs advocate |
A couple of years ago some decisions were made that caused the end of our regional tourism operation, Tourism Waikato. The organisation was responsible, among other things, for marketing the region as a tourist destination and providing a central point of contact for operators, events, media any many other organisations. Funding was pulled by HCC who, at the time, were focusing on their own event strategies and needed to prioritise.
In the end that was their decision and although it meant the demise of Tourism Waikato, we can’t really quarrel with it given we now play host to such international events as the V8 Supercars.
However, some recent events point to the fact that we appear to have a gaping hole in our repertoire. It may be just a coincidence but it’s hard to look at the facts and not conclude that Tourism Waikato is missed. Motel bed nights are down, visitors to SKYCITY have dropped, Air New Zealand has pulled most of its international flights and overall visitor numbers are down.
It may be that without a concentrated, centralised effort we are missing the boat as far as tourists go and we can only look forward to further decreases in tourist numbers.
It’s fair to say that this region is fairly hard to market as a tourist destination. We have great surf beaches in Raglan, stunning mountain walks, the Waitomo Caves, lovely galleries, excellent restaurants and accommodation - the list goes on. But it is this very diversity that makes marketing difficult as unlike destinations such as Rotorua and Coromandel, we lack for a singular focus and with relatively modest marketing budgets it’s always hard to make a noise against the bigger budgets of competing Regional Tourist Operators.
With this issue aside, we still have a problem. Potential visitors, travel agents and tour operators have nowhere to go when they want to find out about what’s on offer here, and with no marketing effort will eventually drop us from their radar screens. Add to this list potential residents and the problem just grows. We recently had an example of a client who wants to attract top talent to the region with lifestyle being a big part of the sell. In normal circumstances we would add the Tourism Waikato website as a link on the client’s website as this would be a great way to showcase what the region has to offer the leisure seeker. Sadly there is nothing. And if you factor in the recession and apply this issue to the local market, the problem seems worse. Expensive holidays will definitely be off the agenda for many families so a great alternative would be to take in some of the region’s attractions and where better to find out where to go than the Tourism Waikato website? The problem just keeps on growing.
So it’s time the region’s council’s, businesses, tourist operators and interested parties got together and reformed Tourism Waikato. It may be that some changes are required to how the organisation operates, who and what area it represents and how the marketing is conducted. Funding will also be a major issue so whoever gets involved will have to be able to commit long term. However it is set up, if nothing gets done, then nothing is going to happen to improve the state of tourism in the Waikato and we will keep standing still as the rest of the world passes us by – in other words, we will keep going backwards.
Having done business here for the past 9 years after growing up in this part of the world, it just does not seem to be the Waikato way to allow this to happen.
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| john winter |
| December 15, 2008 1.28pm |
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| Contact John Key urgently...he is our new Minister of Tourism.Within the last fortnight I have written him to the effect that we will need to increase domestic tourism now that Summer is here,what with international visitors in decline.
I live in Auckland now and have distributed pamphlets for the Te Aroha Information Centre on a couple of occasions, in local letterboxes in the last 3 years.I do not know how effective my little input was.
Remind John Key of how much the Waikato contributes to the national economy.(I am an ex-Hamiltonian)
John Winter |
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