22/01/2025
Tourism - Winners and Losers
Here's what the mayor of NZ's largest tourism destination, Queenstown, has said,
"When I first started as the mayor, I think it was one resident night to every 30 visitor nights. It is now one to 47," he said.
"We support a big chunk of the visitor economy - the actual residents and the ratepayers here."
He was on board with more growth, but said tourism's social licence had taken a hit with the locals, and they needed support to pay for roads and pipes to cope with additional visitors.
"If that is to increase, I would expect a very serious investment in actually accommodating those visitors because a small ratepayer base can not sustainably keep supporting the tourism industry, especially when those GST receipts or the economic, financial growth that we create is sent up to Wellington," he said.
We will try to travel and stay ethically on our trip. We are going to cities like Barcelona where many of the locals are not happy about the negative impacts of tourism. We understand. I'll talk more of this later.
