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\nThe three-day event was expected to generate more than 60,000 visitor nights at hotels.
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The Hotel Council Aoetaroa says events are a big part of turning Auckland’s central business district into a central entertainment district.<\/p>\n
A Jehovah’s Witness Convention in the city over the weekend has been forecast to boost the city’s economy by more than $20 million.<\/p>\n
The three-day event was expected to generate more than 60,000 visitor nights with hotel occupancy at 85 percent.<\/p>\n
Hotel Council Aotearoa strategic director James Doolan told Morning Report he was hoping the opening of Auckland’s international convention centre next month would bring in more events.<\/p>\n
“You hear people talking about tourism in New Zealand and trying to get back to pre-Covid levels, but really we need to be about 130 percent of pre-Covid levels, because 2019 is seven years ago now…”<\/p>\n
“We need more international and domestic visitors, we’ve also got a very, very expensive railway link in Auckland and fewer people actually go into the CBD to work, so we have to turn our CBD, our central business district, into a central entertainment district, and events are a big part of that,” Doolan said.<\/p>\n
Doolan said large events were needed to fill out hotels.<\/p>\n
“Events attract people to Auckland and it creates what’s called compression, because we have about 14,000 hotel rooms in Auckland, we’re a big city, so 14,000 hotel rooms that need to be sold out 365 days of the year,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The only way you do that is if you also have events, you can’t just have [Free Independent Travel].”<\/p>\n
Doolan said large events like the Jehovah’s Witness Convention took years to plan.<\/p>\n
“You also need to pay what’s called subvention payments for some of these events, and that’s essentially a cash incentive to encourage an event to come to New Zealand or Auckland instead of many of the competitor destinations around the world.”<\/p>\n
It made sense for central government to invest in sensible incentives and subvention funding, Doolan said.<\/p>\n
“Every dollar that a tourist spends in New Zealand, they also pay GST on top of those dollars, and international tourism is one of the only export sectors where Central Government collects GST.”<\/p>\n