Destination Marlborough Shift To Council Management Confirmed

Friday, 28 June 2024, 7:07 pm
Article: Maia Hart - Local Democracy Reporter

Marlborough’s council has agreed to bring the region’s tourism marketing agency under council management.

The “interim solution” will involve moving Destination Marlborough’s permanent staff to the council, which will absorb the organisation’s assets and financial shortfall - expected to be about $200,000.

Marlborough District Council chief financial officer Geoff Blake asked the council to make the decision at a meeting on Monday.

He recommended the $200,000 be funded by way of a loan.

This was agreed by the council at the meeting.

The council’s economic, community and support services department would be responsible for the activities currently carried out by Destination Marlborough. The trust would enter voluntary liquidation on July 1.

The trust’s board resigned en masse in September last year over an employment dispute brought by former general manager Bruce Moffatt, who had been in the role for less than a year.

The council funded a settlement between the two on the basis that the money be recovered from Destination Marlborough.

At the meeting, Marlborough Sounds ward councillor Ben Minehan asked Blake how much Destination Marlborough received from the council each year.

Blake said it was about $1.1m, in addition to a targeted tourism rate which provided about $200,000.

Marlborough Sounds ward councillor Scott Adams said the proposal would give Destination Marlborough staff some certainty going forward and “institutional knowledge” would be retained.

“In my view this is a good proposal to keep it going, and it does allow us to stop, pause and look at the model that we are going to use going forward,” Adams said.

Marlborough mayor Nadine Taylor agreed.

“The day that the existing trustees resigned was a day that really signposted we were going to have to do something with this organisation to get it back up on its feet,” Taylor said.

Commissioners who had been working with Destination Marlborough since the trustees resigned would stay on an interim basis.

They were deputy mayor David Croad, Marlborough Sounds councillor Barbara Faulls, former councillor Trevor Hook and former Destination Marlborough general manager Tracy Johnston.

Tourism consultant and Marlborough Chamber of Commerce board chairperson Tracey Green was Destination Marlborough’s interim general manager.

Taylor said bringing the organisation in-house was the right recommendation to help Destination Marlborough back on its feet.

“Tourism of course is one of our big GDP drivers ... so we don't want to see this particular organisation falling over.

“It just needs to get a bit of a facelift and a little bit more energy behind it.

“On that basis I do think that the proposals here are very sensible, I am in support of turning that deficit into an internal loan.

“It still sits with Destination Marlborough and then we can determine what the structure looks like going forward and how it [Destination Marlborough] will be able to service that.”

Croad said the commissioners, with support from the council, had worked closely with the general manager and her team to rework budgets and forecasting.

“But unfortunately there will be a cashflow deficit at the end of this financial year,” Croad said.

He told the council at the meeting he wanted to focus on the move as a positive.

“I would venture to say that some of the trends of Destination Marlborough as an organisation have changed a lot in the last five or six years,” he said.

“So we need to be forward-focused about this and be really excited about what the future path may need to look like.”

The future of regional tourism promotion was to go through an Investment Logic Mapping process. The process was introduced to New Zealand by the State Services Commission in 2008, and was used by government agencies to test and confirm the rationale behind investment decisions.

Destination Marlborough staff would be be covered by the council’s contract agreements until July 1, 2025, by which point the future of the organisations activities would be resolved.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.

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