Citing companies like Magic Memories, First Table, Intouch, Chomp, Loaded and EpicShot, Roger Sharp says "we’ve got some great businesses servicing the travel and tourism industry already that we can help expand".
To that end, TQ’s partnering with Web in Travel (WiT) — Asia Pacific’s leading travel tech media and events platform — to put on the inaugural WiT Queenstown event on July 21 next year.
This week it announced its first 15 confirmed speakers, including some of the world’s biggest travel tech thinkers.
It’s a unique opportunity, Sharp says, for local companies in the field "to showcase themselves to some of the world’s biggest travel tech investors and companies".
He also believes technology can help Queenstown tourism companies, for example with an app visitors could use to make all their bookings.
"We could collectively help them build technology to give their customers a better experience in Queenstown and then turn that into a business and sell that software or whatever the product is overseas, just like Trojan Holdings have done [with ticketing technology company Intouch], just like Magic Memories have done."
TQ has stated it wants to grow the local tech sector to $1billion in annual GDP within 20 years and shift its share from less than 2% of GDP today to more than 15%, in the process creating high-value jobs.
However, Sharp states, "we don’t need to bring many people into town to actually make a material difference, because we’re starting from a low base, and we also don’t want to be the reason there are more cars on the street".
"We just want to generate more GDP from not many more people."
— PHILIP CHANDLER
