Māori-owned businesses
Several of their businesses focus on preserving culture and traditions and elevating indigenous communities through tourism, so it was an eye-opener for them to see Māori culture at the heart of many of our tourism experiences.
They also heard that tourism ventures are increasingly Māori-owned and operated and that tikanga Māori is woven through every aspect of the experience.
The group were able to take a tour of Ōrākei (Bastion Point) with a kaumatua who was there in the 1970s for the occupation and is a kaitiaki of the land.
Tāmaki Hikoi helps to keep the history of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei alive while generating a steady income by hosting walking tours of a piece of land that’s hugely important to the New Zealand story.
But the Southeast Asian entrepreneurs very much found an industry singing from the sustainability song sheet here in New Zealand. There is something in at least minimising the environmental impact of tourism once our visitors arrive.
Care for the environment and kaitiakitanga was reflected at every meeting the group had, and it really resonated with them. Several in the group are running eco-tourism enterprises that preserve and restore natural heritage and biodiversity in Southeast Asia.
Some of them are pushing boundaries. One is even attempting to get environmental regulations changed. To see New Zealand incorporating sustainability into everyday tourist experiences really gave them something to aspire to.
We learned things too. Asked what New Zealand could do to improve its tourism industry, our visitors from Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia and Malaysia had some advice.
People from Asia make up around quarter of our visitors each year, but we shouldn’t take it for granted.
Visitor arrivals from Asia were down 5.1 per cent in September 2019 compared to the same month in 2018, although we are seeing increasing numbers of visitors from Indonesia, Taiwan and Singapore.