UPFRONT Loving our most-loved places to death

Keith Bellows, vice president of the National Geographic Society and editor-in-chief of National Geographic Traveler Magazine, had strong message for the global tourism industry at the recent Tourism Industry Association conference in Auckland.
“We are,” he says, “loving the places we love most to death.”
In essence the biggest issue facing global tourism now and in the next decade, he says, is that we are overrunning our international treasures.
Bellows, who was the keynote speaker at the three-day conference, said that before the second World War no more than million people travelled to another country in year.
Today, the 130 million coastal population of the Mediterranean doubles in summer due to tourism, and international trips are expected to top one billion by 2010 – thousand-fold increase in human lifetime.
He said New Zealand was one of handful of nations which understood the concerns.
Pertinently the conference was called Managing Paradise and focused on how the industry must grapple with managing New Zealand as destination and the need to be sustainable. All this alongside the impact of cheap air fares, significant competition from Australia and tight labour market.
Tourism is now New Zealand’s single largest export sector and international visitor numbers are expected to reach 2.56 million next year, and rise to 3.21 million by 2011, according to the Ministry of Tourism’s latest forecasts.
While the tourism spend in 2004 was down slightly to $6.30 billion, it is expected to reach $6.96 billion in 2006 increasing further to $9.60 billion by 2011.
As far as sustainability goes, Bellows says the world is at the same point today with tourism that it was in the late 1960s with recycling.
“People haven’t quite connected the dots between their desire to see the great sights and the potential of losing them.”
Alongside this, Bellows says, the customer base is changing.
“The next generation of customers will be participants not consumers. They’ll want to be involved in everything… we are going from an age of broadcast to narrowcast. From the idea of tourism Bigfoot to travellers who tiptoe.”
We are also entering the “age of authenticity” and travellers will want things unique to themselves. Think niches such as minority travel, gay travel, pet-owners travel or reunion travel.
It is what Bellows calls the experiential premium; “people just won’t be satisfied with place, they want it to serve their unique desires”.
And he says New Zealand can’t afford to be mass destination.
“Successful suppliers will mine their cultural uniqueness.”
He says the countries that navigate these treacherous waters “will pay attention to knowing who they are – honouring that identity and not trying to be like someplace else.
“The opportunity… is to ignore short-term trends and bet on the long view.”
He believes this is not merely about ecotourism or sustainable tourism, but about the future of tourism.
“Believe that going the sustainable route is worth the payoff. Make that belief part of everything you do… it must be embedded in your message – message to leave place as it is found.”
Alongside the need for sustainable industry that is growing fast, New Zealand’s tourism operators are also grappling with skills shortage.
Tourism Industry Association chief executive Fiona Luhrs told the conference recent research shows that more than 100,000 people are currently employed in tourism-related jobs.
Each year some 4500 new people are required to sustain projected growth to 2010 along with 12,750 new people to replace those who leave – total requirement of 17,250 people year.
As part of the NZ Tourism Strategy 2010 the industry is currently working on draft workforce and skills report.
Luhrs notes that at present, pay rates in parts of the sector are uncompetitive and “there is need for industry to demonstrate greater ownership of its workforce and skill development needs”.
She says the issues are not unique to tourism nor to New Zealand “but nothing will change until we, as employers, change our behaviours. significant paradigm shift is needed.”