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Recently appointed new Minister for Tourism and Hospitality Louise Upston has shared her vision for revitalising New Zealand’s tourism sector, as part of the government’s economic growth strategy.
“As the Prime Minister (Christopher Luxon) has said, you know, this is the year that we really need to go for growth and tourism has lots of potential in that area,” she says.
Minister Upston’s focus is clear: she aims to restore tourism to its former glory, which once made it the top sector in the nation.
She says part of that growth is government setting an ambitious goal. “Our government’s got a goal to double the value of exports in the next 10 years and tourism of course used to be number one and so I’m planning to do everything I can to get it back to number one and that means very simply growing our visitor numbers.”
Her approach to the success of this is twofold. “My measure of success will be growing the number of visitors and the second part of that which is equally important to me is growing the number of New Zealanders who are working in tourism and hospitality. That very much fits with our growth agenda because there’s no point in growing if New Zealanders aren’t benefiting from that growth,” she says
Reflecting on the current state of the industry, she says that New Zealand is operating at about 86 per cent of its pre-COVID numbers. “If you think about where we are now at, 86 per cent of the 2019 or the pre-COVID numbers, we’ve got a lot of room to make up.
“We should be looking at where our growth would have been but I’m just saying job number one, we need to get back to the 2019 numbers and so that’s why in the immediate time frame, so there’s some actions in the immediate time frame which is the next 90 days and that quite simply is, you know, what steps do we need to do to increase the number of visitors into New Zealand within that time frame and I’ve been doing some work with the sector.”
Highlighting that the first port of call is looking at Australian visitors, she says: “They’re a good percentage of our visitors already and more likely to be able to move those numbers more quickly so that’s the first target.
“Also looking at what do we need to do to restore our numbers from China which is a big market and I’ve been listening to people in the sector about some of the challenges around or changes to the visa settings from China so that’s a second priority in terms of action.”
As the Minister for Disability Issues and Social Development and Employment also, Minister Upston says there is some “real alignment” between her portfolios that she says will provide “perfect opportunity”.
“One of my responsibilities is supporting more Kiwis into work so I see this gives me a perfect opportunity to drive economic growth through tourism that provides those employment opportunities.
“When I talk about employment that’s for all New Zealanders and in my disability responsibilities I want to see more people with disabilities than work and in many of those cases it’ll be in small businesses, like hospitality and tourism, which are predominantly small businesses, which is great.
“I see some real opportunities to what I call mash the portfolios together to maximise the outcomes that I can achieve while I’ve got these jobs,” says Minister Upston.