Let’s be blunt. The pandemic has wreaked havoc with tourism all around the world – shit happens. 

What matters is what you do when it happens.

This is no short sharp shock. It will be some time before borders, vaccinations, bubbles and immunity are not at the top of tourism risk registers. And that’s before the climate crisis is factored in.

Those active in tourism businesses know all this. Some can see that there is no future for what they used to do. 

But what is positive, is that all over the world people are re-thinking and organising to create a world where people do travel safely, enjoy other cultures and places, contribute to local economies and communities, and bring back learning and connection to their own.

A positive future

Just as we can have energy without burning coal and transport without fossil fuel, we can have tourism which is creative rather than destructive. It is not easy and not without cost. Neither was the creation of the old world economy, nor its decline or destruction whichever it may be.

Around the world, we are seeing progressive governments working towards a positive future with tourism businesses. Examples I have seen, just this week are major plans, roadmaps, strategies, narratives (call them what you like), which provide frameworks for consistent investment and action from places as far apart as Iceland and Hawaii. 

As you would expect in a world of variety (not much point in travel if it is all the same), these plans differ substantially. But you can discern in them a common theme which is to create the local tourism narrative from the spaces and the people, and respecting both. Utilising the unique – the world is only flat if we make it so.

This view is infused throughout tourism businesses in Aotearoa. A substantive report, which will hopefully soon be released from captivity in the Wellington bureaucracy, fits with and expands this view. 

National plan

I am directly aware of many endeavours from local communities, hapu and iwi, and private business not to avoid visitors but to embrace them. To create opportunities for mutual growth. 

Larger and established visitor businesses are ready not just to open the border and the doors, but our minds to our future offer, and its impacts and rewards. 

The missing link is clarity from the government on what the guidelines will be. 

You do not have to be Stalin reincarnated to realise that in a country this size, with natural, social and financial sensitivities – which exist – we need a national plan. 

Those “who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by,” as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young put it. 

Here, so far, all we have seen is scattered and reactive policies flung about like litter on a street parade. 

I’ve been asked why I was recently critical of tourism minister Stuart Nash after an industry conference speech. 

This is why – he, and evidently his officials, are missing the point.

Rob Campbell is the chairman of SkyCity, Summerset Holdings and Tourism Holdings.