PFW News Update: February 2022

“Time to rethink tourism”: UN World Tourism Organisation

As Kiwis see our borders opening again – at last – the Project Forever Waiheke team has been exploring how tourism scholars and planners internationally, and here in NZ, are envisaging the future of tourism. 

COVID impacts on tourism

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a devastating effect on global tourism, particularly for developing countries and island nations like Fiji, Cook Islands and Tonga, whose economies depend significantly on international tourists and who cannot pivot to domestic tourism.

As 2021 drew to a close with limitations to travel still in place, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) reported that internationally tourist arrivals increased by just 4 percent in 2021 over the previous year, remaining 72 percent below 2019 levels.

New Zealand’s tourism sector continued to struggle in 2021, but a 2021 uptake in domestic spending has provided some relief. All 31 of New Zealand’s regional tourism organisations (RTOs) saw domestic visitor spending increase in the year to October 2021 over the 2020 period, by up to 50% in some places, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Enterprise (MBIE) figures show.

What next?

However, it is widely accepted that a return to the pre-Covid unrestricted growth model is not only unlikely, but undesirable. In Hawai’i, for example, tens of thousands of extra domestic tourists from mainland US caused havoc for residents as the Hawai’ian islands struggled to cope with unprecedented tourism demands in a supposedly ‘post-pandemic’ boom last year. Water shortages, displacement of locals, gentrification, the need for an army of underpaid workers to serve wealthy tourists… Does this sound familiar? Many Hawai’ians are also deeply concerned about the impacts of overtourism in particular on indigenous rights, as the sentiments in this Instagram post make clear.

Here on Waiheke, while we wait for the draft ‘Waiheke Island Destination Management Plan’ from the Stafford Strategy group, which began their research process for developing this plan last July, one of that team – Emeritus Professor David Simmons, has been reviewing the future of tourism in New Zealand at a personal level too. In an interview early February with Radio New Zealand, Professor Simmons envisaged NZ tourism as largely focused on the domestic market for the next few years, due to Covid uncertainties. In his view, not only Covid restrictions, but people’s pockets and their changing views of what constitutes ‘responsible’ tourism will be the key to survival for tourism businesses here. In particular, he recommends that tourism businesses consider focusing on the NZ visitor, providing packages that provide a range of experiences for small ‘bubble’ groups, like families, and focus on regenerative visitor experiences.

“At the moment much of the [tourism] world is living on a strategy of hope, and hope is not a strategy”. He went on, “Out of adversity comes opportunity… what does tourism that is about [supporting] the environment look like?… What would a tourism that gives back to the environment look like?… There is a sense that tourism may have been subsidised by the public good, whether that’s cultures… or the use of our environmental resources.”

A ‘reset’ to ‘responsible’ tourism, and ‘localising’ tourism…

There is a push now for tourism offerings to take into account the social and environmental costs to high-destination communities. Interestingly, Simmons wants to re-coin ‘freedom camping’ to ‘responsible camping’, where campers consider how their presence is impacting on the local community as well as the physical environment.

Taking the idea of ‘responsible’ tourism further, South Australian tourism researcher Professor Freya Higgins-Desbiolles wrote this recently in the journal Tourism Geographies:

“The COVID-19 pandemic crisis may offer a rare and invaluable opportunity to rethink and reset tourism toward a better pathway for the future. ‘Responsible’ approaches to tourism alone, however, will not offer sufficient capacity to enable such a reset. Instead, such a vision requires a community-centred tourism framework that redefines and reorients tourism based on the rights and interests of local communities and local peoples.” She uses the term “localised tourism” to describe the model that she is developing – read more by Freya here .

Our government had already reached the same conclusion. The 2019 Report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment asserted (p 6) that the “terms of our hospitality (manaakitanga) and responsibility for looking after our tourist destinations (kaitiakitanga) are ones the wider community, not just the industry, should determine”.

What does this mean on Waiheke?

In the autumn/winter of 2020, when the COVID-19 ‘lockdowns’ prevented large volumes of tourists on the island, Project Forever Waiheke and the University of Auckland School of Environment undertook a small research project on pandemic impacts for the Waiheke community. Locals were asked “In what ways has the absence of tourists due to the COVID-19 lockdowns been either negative or positive for Waiheke Island?” Negative impacts were related almost solely to reduced income or a fear of reduced income. On the positive side, Waiheke residents observed a remarkable recovery in many aspects of the island’s social and natural environments. Bird and aquatic life was significantly more visible and vibrant; reduced traffic congestion resulted in more people feeling safe to walk on the roadsides; people came to know their neighbours better through increased street and community contact, as locals were more able to access the beaches and cafés commonly previously dominated in summer by tourists. That is, locals rediscovered the ‘essential’ Waiheke community and natural environments.

Project Forever Waiheke’s 2021 research report – ‘Waiheke is a community, not a commodity’ – identified a strong sentiment among the Waiheke community that the island cannot sustain pre-pandemic tourism volumes without serious degradation to the island’s community and natural environments, and to the ‘special character’ of the island. Some tourism and hospitality businesses on Waiheke themselves have struggled over the holiday season, despite the endless golden weather and the influx of domestic visitors, with staff shortages being a major problem. However, the Gulf News reported that Christmas and January saw the local ‘cash registers ring’, to the relief of tourism businesses, who also expressed gratitude to island locals for supporting them.

Waiheke hospitality operators have commented repeatedly on the goodwill of the local community – family, friends and acquaintances – in helping them to survive the pandemic, and vineyard owners are now recognising that it is that Waiheke community spirit that will get them through this year’s harvest, with the usual picker workforce unavailable due to border restrictions. A recently published article based on research undertaken by Project Forever Waiheke and the University of Auckland in 2020 identified that a high level of community cohesiveness has been a key factor in Waiheke remaining COVID-free for as long as it has.

In an interview with UN News, Zoritsa Urosevic, Executive Director of the UNWTO, has called for new ideas to restart the sector and transform tourism into a more sustainable industry worldwide. Placing limits on numbers of arrivals is one obvious strategy, which the city of Venice is set to implement in an effort to discourage day trippers in particular. Southland district councillors are currently considering trebling the visitor levy to Stewart Island/Rakiura, to a still modest $15 per person.

In line with David Simmons’ and WTO recommendations, encouraging “slow tourism”, where visitors come for longer periods and engage more fully in the local culture, is another strategy that both Waiheke tourism operators and residents consider would be of great benefit to Waiheke.

Other strategies implemented widely overseas to address overtourism have included:

·       Capping and licensing Airbnb and other holiday accommodation, to mitigate residential housing crises

·       Banning or limiting tourist and visitor vehicles in particular areas (e.g. beaches), to reduce traffic congestion and protect natural and built environments

·       Banning some tourism activities, to prevent excessive noise, sea and air pollution, littering, and drunk tourist behaviour towards residents

·       Closing tourist access to vulnerable or damaged natural environments for limited periods, to enable essential restoration.

 Hopefully the anticipated Destination Management Plan for Waiheke will employ some of these strategies that have been effective overseas.

 Tourism in more creative forms?

Meanwhile, in a creative response to overtourism, and more recently to the pandemic restrictions, ‘virtual tourism’ is on the horizon!

“Imagine a human-centric designed, interactive space online that makes a destination accessible and real for a sightseer, with sound captured by electro-acoustics researchers. You could view holiday sites in a video or through self-navigation using voice or joystick controls, interact with people using video-calling platforms, travel through the streets of said location, eavesdrop on local music and much more. This could be stitched together in a single platform individually or in silos on the internet and further enhanced by setting up physical experience tourism centres locally. Such a setup would allow tourist guides, artisans, craftspeople, hoteliers and transport business to create their own digital and virtual offerings and interact with possible customers.” Read more

In fact, virtual tours have already been launched by some tourism companies – and of course have become widely used by the real estate sector internationally and here in NZ as a pandemic response. Current virtual tourism offerings appear to be a bit like fun geographic documentaries, but the potential for real-time virtual tourism is already being explored by some companies, and some governments!