‘Everyone must go!’ New Zealand’s new tourism declares, but so far almost everyone seems to be cringing. The prime minister of New Zealand, Christopher Luxon, this week unveiled the latest tagline aimed first at holidaymakers from Australia but also those living further afield.
Critics say the wording of the latest marketing campaign sounds like something from a Boxing Day sale, or even a cry of desperation from the back of a typically long toilet queue on one of the country’s frequently crowded hiking trails.
Fewer outsiders are being enticed by New Zealand’s lanscapes than was the case before Covid
Luxon, who in a past corporate life was the chief executive of the national carrier, Air New Zealand, says he wants his country to be ‘the top of the bucket list’ for tourists. It’s time for the world ‘to get the bloody hell over here’, he told the broadcaster RNZ.
The wording of the call has been largely greeted with guffaws, however, with some from the opposition Labour party saying it sounds more like a directive to quit the country.
New Zealand has long fancied itself as a uniquely beautiful destination located in one of the world’s most enviable environmental settings, with everything from hiking and biking to kayaking with whales in the great beyond, road-tripping through sky-kissed mountains to lounging on its sun-dappled beaches.
The scenery is impressive enough, in a Lord of the Rings kind of way, although it is somewhat incongruously set against urban centres increasingly characterised by creaking infrastructure, graffitied storefronts and lolling street toughs.
Certainly, fewer outsiders are being enticed by New Zealand’s lanscapes than was the case before Covid. That’s probably not surprising, given the Labour-led government of Jacinda Ardern shut the country down from the outside world for a couple of years, effectively declaring ‘Everyone must stay!’.
Visitor numbers have yet to fully recover. In 2023, 167,000 Brits visited New Zealand, down from 230,000 in the year before the pandemic.
In the meantime, more and more Kiwis are effectively taking the latest slogan at its word, albeit in the opposite direction. The past year has seen New Zealanders decamping for other climes in historically high numbers. Stats NZ reported an unprecedented net migration loss in the year to April 2024 of 56,000 mostly younger citizens. In 2023, the UK welcomed a record 265,000 Kiwi visitors.
Political New Zealand finds itself caught in a bit of a virtue-signalling bind. On the one hand, it wants to present itself as an environmentally exemplary land – ‘100 per cent pure New Zealand’, as an earlier marketing slogan has it – and a boutique destination to the well-heeled few who will keep it that way. Late last year, this was even used as a justification for slapping a new £50 levy on most visitors to play their part in keeping this natural playground all the more pristine.
Yet tourism is also the country’s biggest export earner, and the numbers required to keep it that way mean a lot of carbon emissions as people travel to one of the world’s most far-flung destinations.
A destination that is now being portrayed as like something out of a ‘clearance bin’, harrumphs Labour’s tourism spokeswoman Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. Luxon remains unfazed, saying that the debate it has caused is itself a publicity win. For the sake of New Zealand’s economy, let’s hope the rest of the world agrees.
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