Tourism ready to contribute more to the New Zealand economy
With New Zealand’s December 2022 quarter GDP results setting out a decline of 0.6%, Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) Chief Executive Rebecca Ingram has highlighted the role tourism can play in moving to positive territory.
Pre-COVID (year to 31st March 2020) tourism directly contributed 5.6% of GDP and this fell to 3% through the COVID period (year to 31st March 2022) as the industry focused on domestic tourism alone.
Ingram (pictrued) explained “now, with international visitors starting to return, we are in a great position to recover the 2.6% of GDP that was lost in the COVID period. If we do this, the future national GDP position will be stronger.
“The focus now needs to be on removing the roadblocks to the recovery of our diverse tourism industry.
“While it is great to see international tourism recovering, the tourism industry could be making a greater contribution if pressure on workforce recovery was relieved. Anecdotally, we all hear about businesses that are curtailing their offerings as they simply don’t have enough staff.
“If we can boost the workforce available for our tourism businesses then these businesses will be able to offer more experiences and also extend their opening hours.
“A key first step is to remove the friction we see in the flow of skilled and valuable workers from overseas and, while this is happening to some degree, TIA wants to see this key constraint addressed so we can quickly realise gains for New Zealand as a whole.”
TIA has also announced that Auckland Airport is to further enhance its support for the Auckland Airport Tourism Forum at TRENZ, New Zealand’s biggest and most influential tourism tradeshow.
Now integrated into the TRENZ programme, the Forum is bringing together New Zealand tourism industry leaders and professionals to offer fresh insights and perspectives, alongside some thought provoking and inspiring discussion.
TRENZ 2023 will be taking place in Christchurch on Wednesday 10th May.
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