This Content Is Only For Subscribers
Kohutapu Lodge & Tribal Tours co-founder Nadine Toe Toe has been named Tourism Industry Champion at the New Zealand Tourism Awards 2025, recognising more than a decade of authentic, Indigenous-led tourism and community impact.
Based in Murupara, Nadine and her whānau operate Kohutapu Lodge & Tribal Tours and Whirinaki Forest Footsteps, experiences grounded in manaakitanga, kōrero tuku iho and giving back to community. The award follows another milestone this month, with Lonely Planet naming Kohutapu Lodge among the top cultural experiences in the North Island for 2026.
“We’re not a five-star lodge—we’re five-star hosts,” Nadine says. “We don’t stage culture; we live it. Visitors don’t just take photos—they take responsibility.”
Building community through tourism
For three decades, Nadine has represented Aotearoa in global markets and worked across cultural tourism in Rotorua. Twelve years ago, she and her whānau returned home to her husband’s tribal lands of Ngāti Manawa to build a business that prioritises people, place and purpose.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the team continued to cook, host and deliver thousands of meals to their community, alongside launching life-skills programmes for rangatahi. From this kaupapa grew Native Nations United, a charitable enterprise creating Indigenous youth exchanges across Aotearoa, Australia, Canada and the Pacific.
“Those exchanges aren’t holidays,” Nadine says. “They’re passports back to identity and forward to leadership. When visitors travel our trails, they don’t consume a product—they join a kaupapa.”
Leading cultural health and safety
Nadine also co-created The Visitor Promise, Aotearoa’s first online cultural health and safety modules for visitors and hosts, developed with AU Consulting. The initiative prepares travellers to engage respectfully with Māori culture and helps hosts feel safe and valued.
“In New Zealand we have health and safety for everything—but there was nothing for cultural health and safety,” Nadine says. “The Visitor Promise gives visitors the tools to arrive informed and leave enriched.”
A collective achievement
Nadine dedicated the award to her team and whānau. “You’re only as good as your team. Ours is made of whānau, kaumātua, community, kaimahi and partners who show up,” she says. “We lost so much during COVID—including both my parents—yet the ahi kā never went out. We rebuilt and we’re still rebuilding without losing sight of why we started.”
She also acknowledged her niece—“who made me enter and said, ‘Aunty, if you don’t do this for us and prove that anything is possible, who will?’”—and her husband and children who live and work on-site. “This recognition is theirs,” Nadine says.
