Tourism report highlights areas for improvement

Tourism competitiveness report highlights areas for improvement

Encouraging development of the tourism industry will help New Zealand emerge strongly from the economic downturn, Tourism Industry Association New Zealand (TIA) Chief Executive Tim Cossar says.

A new international report shows New Zealand is among the world’s most attractive countries for the development of travel and tourism, Mr Cossar says.  But improvements to infrastructure and removing other barriers to development would make the industry even more competitive against other international visitor destinations.

The World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2009 ranks New Zealand as the 20th out of 133 countries, and 4th in the Asia Pacific region, for the ease of tourism industry development.  The report, available at http://www.weforum.org/TTCR09, says New Zealand benefits from its rich natural resources, with a pristine natural environment (ranked 3rd) and several World Heritage national sites (ranked 16th), protected by strong and well-enforced environmental legislation.

It says New Zealand’s overall policy rules and regulations are conducive to tourism development (ranked 10th), with the least time and lowest cost to start a business of all countries, along with transparent policy making.

“I was pleased to see we rate highly for safety and security (15th) and that our people have the world’s second best attitude to foreign visitors, topped only by Barbados. However, the report makes it clear there are areas where we can make improvements to our international competitiveness,” Mr Cossar says.

The report highlights the importance of industry working in partnership with government to develop tourism, generating employment and stimulating economic growth.  Investment in infrastructure is key, along with a skilled workforce.

“Tourism featured at last week’s Job Summit as an industry that is critical to New Zealand’s future and the industry featured highly in the top 20 ideas to come out of the event, including a proposed $60 million public-private sector fund to boost tourism numbers.

“In the last few days we seen the focus on tourism continue, with the Prime Minister’s discussions in Australia about the possibility of reclassifying trans-Tasman flights as domestic routes, which would help boost arrivals from Australia.

“There’s still a lot more work to do on these proposals but TIA will continue to work with government and industry to make progress over the next few months. I’m confident measures like these will help improve our international competitiveness by the time next year’s report is put together.”

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