Josie Pagani is a commentator on current affairs and a regular opinion contributor. She works in geopolitics, aid and development, and governance.
OPINION: I love my country. I’ve climbed its mountains, walked the tracks, swum the beaches as published by thepost.
Our tourism industry is getting this stunning landscape to do all its work. We are packaging it in a low quality, exploitative, and disappointing tourist experience.
Last week, we took a driving holiday to the South Island, deciding to splash out for a luxury experience. I’ve long wanted to visit Aoraki Mt Cook and stay at the Hermitage, where my mum used to stay as a child. It was luxurious then for its time, with high teas and views to calm a restless mind.
Today the Aoraki National Park is still breathtaking, but the Hermitage hotel has the style of a shopping mall at luxury prices, offering an experience that is to premium what fast food is to cuisine.
Dinner was a charmless, over-lit foodhall, where busloads of guests piled plates at a generically bland buffet. Fish, curry, cheese, a chocolate mousse – oh, I’ll have a piece of that sushi too.
Where the destination of my parents and grandparents offered the hope of a memorable and unique experience, now there is penny-pinching. UHT milk, cheap tea, cheaper shampoos.
Tourism is our second-biggest export earner. The Government has made it a priority for growth. But it’s all volume, little value. Cram people into buses, drive to spots to look at the view, put them up in bog-standard over-priced hotels, sell them some tack, extract everything you can for as little as possible in return. No need to charm visitors you never expect to return.
The late Paul Callaghan pointed out that we won’t grow more prosperous from tourism. Every tourism job in New Zealand reduces the average wage.
He calculated, back in 2011, that the value of a job in tourism to the economy was about $80,000. A dairying job created $350,000 of value. The gap can’t be closed by downgrading hotel loo-paper to single ply and selling more souvenir key rings.
I love baristas but you won’t grow the economy off the back of them. And guys, you have to admit: if you’d studied harder and spent less time on your beards you might have got a skill that made us all better off as a country.
In some parts of the country, tourism wages are so low, and housing so expensive, that staff are living in backpacker hostels.
The tourism minister claims, “more visitors means more people staying in our hotels, eating in our cafés, spending in our shops and visiting our attractions, creating jobs and driving economic growth”.
Wishing and over-confidence is becoming the signature of this Government the way sanctimony and fecklessness were hallmarks of the previous one.
The minister would do more service recognising tourism is a low-wage, low-productivity strategy, at least the way it is offered now. It is one of the reasons Kiwis work longer and harder than just about anybody, but earn less per hour than nearly all other countries we compare ourselves to.
Adding to the hundreds of thousands of tourists visiting Milford Sound each year, or the Church of the Little Shepherd in Tekapo, or the 100,000-plus tourists walking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, is not a growth plan.
On our South Island trip, we found two towns that got the experience right.
Geraldine, inland between Ashburton and Timaru, is delightful. We found tempting art galleries including one displaying pieces by Mr Badcock, Ms Badcock, another Mr Badcock, and Mr Hitchcock. There is a theme there.
The town is home to Barkers condiments and juice, which runs a cafe that would work anywhere in the world. Close by, we filled a bag with local cheeses better than any you find in a supermarket.
Tourist buses stop there, but the tourism experience is built on businesses that are succeeding for their unique products. They would work even without the buses.
In Kaikōura, outlets offer crayfish caught locally. A local butcher’s cafe sells flat whites among cabinets of lamb cutlets. It’s unique and they deliver nationwide. (My husband rates their lamb saveloys as an undiscovered delicacy.)
There are many tourist operators in New Zealand offering amazing experiences. Māori tourism has an edge because it can’t be found anywhere else. Instead of packaging it as something to gawk at, imagine if it was built on complementary activity – if Rotorua, for example, was home to a global-scale Māori art centre, and a university centre for indigenous studies combining knowledge, history and cultural study from around the Pacific.
Paul Callaghan said, “we are poor because we choose to be poor”. He meant we choose to own and work in businesses that require long hours for little output per hour worked – like tourism.
Imagine if our food and art businesses scaled like wine. Or dark sky research and our huge ocean economy combined unique advantages with advanced tech.
That would be better than a grasping, low-quality tourism sector. Anyway, the visitors will keep coming. Aoraki isn’t going anywhere.
