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Stuart Nash argues NZ should target wealthier tourists over people who consume two-minute noodles.
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New Zealand’s tourism minister has said again that the country will not try to attract people who “travel around our country on $10 a day and eat two-minute noodles.”
Stuart Nash said that the country would not be ashamed to keep focusing on “high-quality” big spenders, even though one expert said that such visitors usually left a bigger impact on the environment and didn’t necessarily help the economy more.
As the country’s borders reopened on Wednesday, Nash made an announcement about plans to hire more people to work in tourism. He said that the country would continue to focus on “big spender” visitors. ” “We’re not going to hide the fact that we’re going to market to high-quality tourists,” he said.
“We will welcome backpackers, but we won’t go after people who post on Facebook about how they can travel around our country on $10 a day by eating two-minute noodles.”
Even though the minister has said that backpackers and other visitors with less money are still welcome in New Zealand, his focus on wealthy tourists has in the past been criticised.
Nash said that in 2020, the country would “unapologetically” try to attract tourists who “fly business class or premium economy, hire a helicopter, tour Franz Josef, and then eat at a high-end restaurant.” Some people didn’t like the ideas. One person said they were “snobby, elitist, and out of touch.”
Prof. James Higham, a professor of tourism at Otago University, said that the research didn’t necessarily support the idea that “high net worth individuals” contributed more to New Zealand than budget travellers. “There’s no proof of that,” he said.
“Over the past few decades, the trend around the world has been for tourists to travel farther, faster, produce more CO2, stay less time at the destination, and spend less money there,” said.
He said that the result was often “very rich people destroying the planet while not contributing as we might have hoped or expected.”
“Big spenders are often the most harmful to the environment, and because they tend to have regular repeat high-carbon travel with short stays, they’re not very helpful, especially to New Zealand-made places that are far away.”
He said that tourists with less money, like international students and backpackers, stayed in the country longer, and the length of stay was directly related to how much money they spent in the country as a whole.
For example, most people who came on cruise ships were wealthy, but they only spent 3% of what visitors did, even though they made up 9% of visitors. “Cruise passengers don’t do nearly as much for the economy as students who come here to study,” he said.
People who travel on a budget often come back. People who came as backpackers might come back as workers or tourists later in life, said Higham.
Nash’s comments come as New Zealand tries to rebuild its tourism industry and workforce after being cut off from the rest of the world for a year because of pandemic precautions.
Before Covid-19, international tourism was a big part of the country’s economy. It contributed directly and indirectly to 9.3% of the country’s GDP. However, as the number of visitors grew, so did worries about environmental damage, overcrowding, and strain on infrastructure.
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