The end of tourism?

Ayres rock is a mess. a ban on climbing it is coming in, around sept i think theres signs asking people not to climb it out of cultural respect, but theres queues of people climbing it. theres a lot of mess created by the tourists all around ayres rock.

tourism is just another form of consumerism. The location or activity is just another asset to utilise. One can either exploit it for all its worth block access except to a select few or control it to try and get the best of both worlds. Maybe the time is coming when great walks can no longer be the bargain it is currently. Controlling the walks will mean more people will miss out but the alternative is they will be wrecked and people will go to a dump instead of a scenic wonderland

What is the definition of a ‘tourist’? I’m off to hike the Abel Tasman solo in mid winter, I live in Auckland and will fly down does that make me a tourist? It’s something I’ve been curious about for a while. I live in the Waitakere ranges and used to walk the Hillary trail, but as I’m a resident am I not a tourist?

That's a can of worms because you are a different thing to different people. You could be viewing someone from a nationalistic point of view. You might be viewing someone from a very local point of view. You could be viewing someone from a cultural, recreational or any other point of view. All the definitions i can find have the common theme of travel. Even on foot, you are travelling. Therefore even as a tramper you are potentially seen as a tourist. I've always hated thinking myself as a tourist because i spurn being guided on tours or being in queues. With it being such a broad term i am lumped in with the mobile home crowd and everybody who ALWAYS look for the easy path in life. So, it looks like I'M a BLOODY TOURIST. Thanks for bringing that up.

Tourism numbers increaased a lot with a drive from the former government to increase tourism numbers for increased revenue. Just the same as massively increasing immigration numbers. Both of these pushes were made with very little consideration for NZ resources and infrastructure that is now under tremendous pressure because of this.

Newtons third law of physics , if i'm correct. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Any industry that contributes to an economy is going to use a resource. There has to be a down side as well as an upside. The solution to many of the problems would be to cull the worlds human population. But no one wants to talk about it.

> Both of these pushes were made with very little consideration for NZ resources and infrastructure that is now under tremendous pressure because of this. At one point I recall Tourism NZ was at a $120 million/year spend for its primary role of what was essentially marketing. Its Annual Report justified this amount by citing the billions of dollars of extra money this was bringing into NZ. For some reason, however, there was no strategic allocation of extra money towards trying to mitigate externalities from all of these additional visitors. Everything was just expected to cope with it and sort itself out.

We all know tourism has a negative impact; that's not the reason why I started this thread. In my book every problem is an opportunity someone has yet to take responsibility for. The point is, no-one wants to be just a 'tourist'. Many people want to connect with the local people and contribute something meaningful to the places they are visiting. It's a whole different way to looking at our short term visitors and making our mutual experience a lot more worthwhile. What for instance if we created opportunities for visitors to participate in conservation projects, track maintenance or pest control? Or if tramping clubs actively ran trips at a professional level targeted at visitors? I realise there are obvious objections that could be raised, but nothing is insurmountable if we put our minds to the idea that we should be moving away from mass, low cost 'tourism', toward higher quality, high value experiences. If we make that our narrative, then in what manner can the tramping community participate in this? When I started tramping the whole idea of something like Permolat was unthinkable, so what might be possible if instead of grumbling about mass visitors as a problem, we started to think of it as an opportunity?

I've certainly made my contribution to global warming and to air pollution and to Air NZ and to the NZ tourism market. I've flown to NZ, just to walk and climb, close to 50 times. How can i possibly be held to account for that. Alot of this wasn't a big issue until recent times. I was tricked into it.