Tourism is flourishing in the Waitaki, with several operators reporting their busiest-ever summer season. Rebecca Ryan talks to Tourism Waitaki general manager Jason Gaskill, who believes the district is on the threshold of an era of amazing growth.
International accolades for Oamaru and the Waitaki district are coming thick and fast.
After being labelled one of the world's "hippest'' destinations in 2012, Oamaru was named the "sharpest town'' in the country in 2013 before being crowned New Zealand's "coolest'' town by Lonely Planet.
This week, the district's Alps 2 Ocean Cycle Trail made it on to a list of the world's 16 best destinations in 2016 by travel publishers Frommer's.
Tourism Waitaki general manager Jason Gaskill is "cautiously excited about what's to come''.
"We just really want people to know there's a lot of stuff going on throughout the district and, in the tourism sector, things are good.
"It's been a particularly busy Christmas and New Year period for the district - we've had really heavy bookings through the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony, Alps 2 Ocean has been busy, we know accommodation providers along the trail have been busy and are looking to have a reasonably full summer.''
Tourism Waitaki's confidence in the industry will see some major projects go ahead in 2016 and years to come.
"All the measures that we're looking at indicate that things are going to continue to improve.
"It's all very positive and, going by some of the attractions - the [penguin] colony, the trail, the other activities throughout the district - it indicates things are pretty busy.''
This year would see a major redevelopment of the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony visitor centre, marking the end of a six-year project.
The tender process had begun and Mr Gaskill hoped construction would start within two months.
"We're expanding the visitor centre itself.
"It's going to completely change the flavour of what happens there.''
At present, about 450 people visited the penguin colony each night.
The development would give day-time visitors more to do and include more displays and experiences and a bigger retail area.
"We've got 20 years of research, we've got one of the world's leading penguin specialists on staff, we've got access to all this really cool stuff and we just want to show it off.''
Setting up a heritage centre and trail in Oamaru's Victorian Precinct would be a major focus for Tourism Waitaki and the Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust.
In September, the Government announced it would invest $290,000 in Tourism Waitaki's Harbour St project - one of five tourism projects the Government was investing in.
What the Harbour St project would look like was still being planned.
"We're hoping to get a firmer idea of what exactly it's going to be in the next couple of months and we're looking at bringing people in to assist in the development of some of the creative concepts,'' Mr Gaskill said.
"At the moment, we're in the process of working with MBI [the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment] to finalise the agreements and timelines.''
The Harbour St project would not be a museum, nor a theme park or art gallery, but it would combine aspects of all three.
"It's going to be a chance for people to come in and be part of the historic precinct in Oamaru, to whatever level you would like to be.
"Fit yourself into the world, as it was, in Harbour St.''
The project would generate business and jobs and the "real hope'' was that the space inside could evolve over time.
The total budget for the project was $600,000, close to half of which would come from the Government, which was encouraging, he said.
"That's a reasonably substantial opportunity to do something quite unique and Oamaru-centric, but very much historic precinct-focused,'' he said.
It would encourage visitors to the precinct to financially participate more than at present.
"It's not just another thing for people to do, it's a launching platform for the historic precinct, without betraying what they are currently doing - we really just want to take what's down there and show it off.
"We don't want to change the culture down there, we want to bottle it up so that people get a sense of the flavour and just how cool and how quirky and how unique that area really is.''
The Waitaki district's popularity as a conference destination was also growing.
IrrigationNZ is bringing its 2016 conference to the Waitaki and further conferences were expected to be announced soon.
"It's being seen as destination because of what it has.''
The district was on track to see more than 90,000 visitors through the i-Site this year.
Discussions were under way about refreshing the Oamaru i-Site to meet the demands of tourists.
"Obviously, the visitors' interests, they haven't changed, but I suppose the way they are comfortable gathering information has evolved with technology,'' he said.
"We're looking at incorporating all of that into what goes on in the i-Site.''
International interest was mostly from Asia, particularly China, as well as Australia and the UK.
More inquiries were being fielded from the US and other Asian countries including Japan and Korea.
"We're cautiously excited about what's to come.
"But our visitor mix is still pretty stable. We have a lot of domestic visitors coming, primarily from the South Island.
"The volumes are different now, there's more.
"There's definitely more people coming and we're really focusing over the next few years on giving them more things to do while they're here so they stick around longer.''
Alps 2 Ocean was a special trail, and Mr Gaskill expected to see visitor activities around the district change over the next 18 months.
"They'll stay longer, they'll do more, they'll see more in the district - that's our expectation and we're starting to see those trends pick up.
"We need to give them reasons to not just see pockets, but to see the whole thing.''
Tourism Waitaki had a strong, positive presence at conferences, industry meetings and trade shows and staff had upcoming events in Australia, Korea and Japan.
"We'll be promoting quite heavily cycling opportunities when we're in Australia because we know that's big over there.
"Whereas in Asia, we'll be looking at some of the more unique and interesting aspects that they find - the open spaces, the agricultural activities, the wildlife, the historic activities.''
In May, Trenz, New Zealand's biggest annual international tourism event, would be an opportunity to talk about plans for the heritage centre and trail.
Oamaru had a good base to work from and community commitment to seeing the town prosper over the past 10 years was starting to pay dividends.
"I think we're at the front end of what could be an amazing growth opportunity on a lot of fronts.
"We hear that from a lot of people in the industry,'' he said.
It was an exciting time for the Waitaki but growth will not come without challenges.
More accommodation, and high-end accommodation, was something the district needed.
One of Oamaru and the Waitaki's most attractive features was its personality, attitude and feeling - maintaining that, while helping tourism grow, would be a challenge.
"It's kind of that undercurrent of comfort with just how good things actually are, without having to come out and say how good things actually are, that you end up with restaurants like Riverstone Kitchen, one of the best restaurants in the country, Fleur's Place, you've got the Steampunk development here which, to be honest, happened because a lot of people just wanted to - now, [Steampunk HQ] is in Lonely Planet as one of the top things to do when you hit New Zealand.
"It's kind of like there's this mentality that we didn't set out to be it but it was just natural that it was going to be that way because it just is that cool and it just continues to get more and more cool.''
The winter of 2015 was one of the busiest on record.
"While the peaks and troughs were still quite extreme, both were higher than before. Summer peaks are higher than they used to be, our winter peaks are higher than they used to be,'' he said.
The challenge was not necessarily attracting more people but getting visitors already coming to stay longer.
There were longstanding discussions about open hours, particularly over Christmas and New Year, when, traditionally, a lot of businesses shut down as the owners and their families went on holiday.
Oamaru's size was against it.
"We are a small district in the South Island of a small nation in the South Pacific that's a long way from a lot of places,'' he said.
"Having said that, a lot of people are looking for that. It just means people have to make a lot of plans to get here and we need to be really good at explaining why they need to go to the effort.''
