Tourism Infrastructure Investment Report

Tourism Infrastructure Investment Report

Regional Tourism Organisations New Zealand (RTONZ) welcomes open and constructive dialogue on visitor levies and other tourism funding mechanisms. We welcome the release of the industry led report on visitor levy and funding options and support a collaborative industry assessment of the potential benefits to New Zealand.

RTONZ Chair Graham Budd, also CEO of Destination Queenstown, comments that while the growth of visitor numbers around New Zealand is very welcome, producing significant economic benefits for many regions, this remains unevenly distributed.

The needs of each region across the country are different when it comes to prioritising the range of tourism related services that communities must fund. This can include tourism promotion and marketing, events, visitor support services such as information centres and visitor related infrastructure such as parking, toilets and similar facilities. The range of needs is very broad.

Visitor growth is also imposing an unaffordable burden on many relatively small ratepayer communities to provide public visitor infrastructure while also protecting and enhancing our natural and built environment. We are proud of our national reputation as welcoming and caring hosts and want to provide great experiences. To help achieve this we believe it is reasonable that visitors should be required to make a small contribution to the costs, nationally and regionally, of providing essential components of the experience they enjoy.

RTONZ does not agree with some opinion regarding the perceived risks of introducing visitor levies and believes that many arguments do not hold up against the vast pool of international experiences and proven examples which we can learn from.

As such RTONZ welcomes a united industry recognition of the problems we are trying to solve together, and that finding funding solutions is the largest hurdle to successfully achieving this. A strong partnership approach between national and local government and the visitor industry is essential while it will also be critical to ensure that the use of funds from visitor levies is well framed through legislation, regulatory or other mechanisms.

Where levies are collected within defined regions we believe the best people to understand specific local needs and priorities are those communities themselves. Management and application of at least some of these funds should therefore be vested within local authority territories or regions. This will also help address resident resistance towards tourism growth in parts of the country where relatively small ratepayer communities are under severe pressure during peak times.

Once again we welcome an open and constructive discussion and believe this could be a significant time in defining New Zealand’s ability to effectively enable sustainable tourism growth in the years ahead.

About RTONZ

Regional Tourism Organisations of New Zealand (RTONZ) is the name for the unincorporated collective of 30 existing Regional Tourism Organisations (RTO’s).

It was established as a Charitable Trust in 2005, with the objects being to represent the interests of the collective RTO sector in New Zealand.

RTONZ has regular formal meetings, a Board of Trustees of six (3 North Island, 3 South Island), including an elected chairperson. RTONZ activities on behalf of all RTO’s are administered through a full time Executive Officer, based in Wellington

As the peak body for RTO’s, RTONZ aims to encourage better coordination amongst RTO’s, as well as ensuring collective RTO’s are engaged and consulted with on issues critical to the development of the regional tourism sector in New Zealand.

The activities RTONZ engages in include:

• Developing RTONZ submissions on issues and draft plans that impact the collective

• Providing advice and assistance to members

• Developing and maintaining ongoing relationships with stakeholder agencies

• Negotiation and execution of project based funding contracts

• Managing and implementation of projects on behalf of RTONZ

• Coordination of media enquiries

• Advocacy of the RTO sector and the important role it plays in the New Zealand tourism landscape

Core funding for RTONZ is provided by the RTOs themselves, with partnership funding for regional related projects from various central and local government sources.

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