The draft New Zealand Tourism Strategy 2015 was released on 16 May 2007 and is available online. The Ministry of Tourism is seeking feedback on the strategy by Wednesday 27 June 2007 via the electronic template on their website or by email.  

The draft strategy is the result of a mid-term review of the New Zealand Strategy 2010. The 2010 strategy was developed to guide the sustainable growth of the tourism sector. While it highlighted the important role that culture and heritage plays in the appeal of New Zealand as a tourist destination - particularly for Tourism New Zealand’s target market the interactive traveller - it also indicated that the cultural sector was one area that could benefit from further development in order to maximize its potential. 

As a result, a substantial research project was undertaken to identify what cultural experiences tourists were seeking and how they could be improved. In addition, five regions – Northland, Taranaki, Wellington, Nelson and Hawkes Bay - were awarded $10,000 to develop a cultural tourism plan and a further $100,000 to implement that plan.
 
The new draft strategy sets the course for the tourism sector to 2015. It reinforces the vision and objectives of the original strategy and identifies new priority areas to be addressed.  In particular, it emphasises the challenges posed by environmental sustainability, emerging labour shortages and workforce issues and industry profitability. 
 
This is all good stuff. However, although the strategy refers throughout to Maori culture and its importance for tourism, it makes little reference to the contribution that the wider cultural sector – galleries, museums, heritage sites, performing arts etc - makes to the tourism experience in New Zealand. 

While some of the issues and priority areas identified in the draft strategy are as relevant to the cultural sector as they are to tourism generally, there may be others specific to the cultural sector that could be raised in feedback on this draft.
 
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage encourages cultural agencies to respond to the draft strategy - especially to the omission of any reference to the cultural sector and the importance of cultural experiences to the tourism industry in New Zealand.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 21st, 2007 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Submissions, Cultural tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.