\u201cThe membership also provides direct access to Regional Tourism NZ for industry resources, expert advice, and collaboration opportunities with other regional tourism organisations to attract international visitors.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditionally, it strengthens the council\u2019s relationship with Tourism New Zealand, allowing alignment with their initiatives specifically designed to attract international visitors to smaller regions like Whakat\u0101ne.\u201d<\/p>\n
A collective of Eastern Bay tourism operators had previously expressed their concerns about the council\u2019s withdrawal from Tourism Bay of Plenty, a decision made in a public-excluded meeting due to commercial sensitivity.<\/p>\n
Whakat\u0101ne Tourism Collective, represented by Tio \u014chiwa Tours operator Wini Geddes and Kohutapu Lodge and Tribal Tours director Nadine Toe Toe, made a deputation to the council at a meeting on June 26.<\/p>\n
Their concerns included the lack of consultation, communication and transparency from the council over its decision to withdraw $89,115 of funding to be part of the regional tourism operator and bring the council\u2019s tourism promotion of the district in-house.<\/p>\n
They said operators within the collective would be removing their advertising from the Whakat\u0101ne I-site and would no longer participate in council-led tourism initiatives.<\/p>\n
They told Local Democracy Reporting the contribution to Tourism Bay of Plenty linked them to domestic and international tourists through Tourism New Zealand and New Zealand M\u0101ori Tourism, and represented just 2.8% of the council\u2019s annual $3 million tourism budget.<\/p>\n
Quoting Stats NZ, they said the region received $166 million in visitor spend annually, with approximately $20m of that from international visitors. More than 10% of the workforce in Eastern Bay was employed in tourism. <\/p>\n
Burgess said the membership with Regional Tourism NZ was costing the council $3750 a year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis represents a significant saving compared to the previous annual grant to Tourism Bay of Plenty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis approach allows the council to maintain valuable tourism industry connections and support while achieving significant cost savings for ratepayers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe membership also provides direct access to Regional Tourism NZ for industry resources, expert advice, and collaboration opportunities…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4886,7558,2454,4761,117,111,43,139,69,17152,45666,61,10097,2240],"class_list":["post-99660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-aims","tag-councils","tag-industry","tag-membership","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rebuild","tag-ties","tag-to","tag-tourism","tag-whakatne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}