Quake rebuild a chance to 'refresh' tourism sector

The earthquakes which have racked Canterbury and devastated parts of Christchurch have given the tourism industry there an unprecedented opportunity to re-invent itself and "push the refresh button", a tourism advisor says.

"Over time, Christchurch will become a very new and different proposition in our tourism markets," Tourism Industry Association (TIA) advisor Sean Murray said.

"The recovery process will set the city's economic and lifestyle legacy for decades to come."

Westpac economists have estimated economic activity worth $4 billion this year -- equivalent to 2 percent of New Zealand's annual gross domestic product (GDP) - has been disrupted, and in Christchurch local tourism operators have been hit hard.

In the short-term there were challenges for the industry, local government and central government:

• Minimising the potential lost business;

• Keeping visitor industry businesses viable during a rebuild period up to five years;

• Keeping investor confidence high to re-invest in the industry;

• Protecting Christchurch business income in the immediate "high" season;

• Retrieving "lost" group tours and convention markets in the 2012/13 high season.

Mr Murray said the tourism industry was resilient but the quakes had highlighted the industry's interconnectedness and the need for strong ties between the private and public sectors "which ordinarily tend to be overlooked".

A State of the Tourism Sector 2011 report released today showed just over 45 percent of the tourism businesses nationally which responded to a survey said there had been a change to forward bookings.

In interviews carried out by Lincoln University researchers three weeks after the February aftershock killed 181 people, tourism operators talked about levels of uncertainty, initial forward booking impacts on markets such as Japan and shifts in itineraries by visitors.

Some tourists showed "a great deal of uncertainty and guilt in progressing with holidays planned".

International visitors had changed their plans and visited other destinations instead of Christchurch, and a lot of bookings from Japan had been cancelled.

Some tourism operators said they had actually been more affected by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and others in regions outside Cantebury said a key impact had been increased numbers of Christchurch residents visiting.

In the medium-term there was concern that the loss of Christchurch as a gateway to the South Island could reduce the numbers of visitors to other regions of the South Island, and some North Island operators reported they had gained visitors who would otherwise have gone to the South Island.

"Overall, it was considered a good thing that the earthquake occurred at the end of the busy summer season, when there was less potential for advance bookings to be cancelled," the report said.

Tourism operators differed on whether Christchurch should be taken out of the tourism trade while it was rebuilt, or whether the city could still operate as a tourism hub without a fully functioning CBD.

Several operators noted inadequate contingency planning in the tourism sector for disasters, and pointed to the importance of having sufficient cash reserves and key data stored somewhere accessible.