Long-time local Stuart Maclean, who was chairman of the local National Travel Association branch, says he got involved in setting up the then-named Queenstown Promotion Bureau (QPB) on the suggestion of local businessman Russell Webley.
"He came up with the idea we needed to promote the town on a more professional basis."
After opening an office in January, 1984, however, it desperately struggled for funding.
Then-admin manager Hilary Finnie recalls "half of my job was selling memberships to businesses, and if I didn’t sell enough, there wasn’t enough money to pay me".
She recalls QPB’s marketing was mostly domestic — "I remember once we flew some snow to [Auckland’s] Queen St and built a snowman and got quite a lot of news coverage".
Original executive director David Bradford, later elected mayor, harshly criticised the then Queenstown Borough and Lake County councils for their threadbare funding of the bureau.
"I would accuse the councils of not understanding the importance of tourism in the community," he told Mountain Scene.
"Their attitude endangers the livelihoods of the whole community."
The Lake County Council, which he sat on, took him to the Audit Office for seeking funding for personal benefit, however he was cleared as he’d already resigned in mid-’85 and didn’t have a pecuniary interest.
For some time the QPB couldn’t afford to replace him — a committee of board members ran it, Finnie recalls.
The breakthrough came after accountant Mike Ross and hotelier Geoff Johnson convinced John Davies, the mayor of the amalgamated Queenstown Lakes District Council, to levy businesses through their commercial rates.
"It’s amazing," Maclean says, "because the rest of New Zealand couldn’t believe we got the jump on them."
Another early initiative was successfully lobbying, through lawyer Graeme Todd, for Queenstown retailers to trade 24/7.
David Kennedy, later CEO of the renamed Destination Queenstown (DQ) for almost 10 years, till 2008, says "the cooperation between businesses and DQ was kind of jealously looked upon by other regions".
"Businesses all understood you only competed once you got people in your destination, so the destination came first."
As much as Covid knocked tourism for a six, Kennedy recalls Queenstown weathering many storms during his reign including an Asian financial crisis, the ’99 floods, which he countered with the tag-line, ‘we’re 99% open’, 9/11, Sars and Ansett Australia’s collapse.
And yet, proving the resort’s resilience, visitor numbers almost doubled during his time.
Those years were also huge for the former Queenstown Winter Festival, whose drag race Kennedy entered about 10 times.
"Part of the reason we ended up owning it was it was such a high-profile event it was interwoven with the brand of Queenstown."
A highlight in his time was the council agreeing to raise the commercial levy by another $1million to target the Aussie market on the back of new transtasman air services.
A later CEO, the late Graham Budd, who had almost eight years in the hot seat, also won another $900,000 after DQ members originally turned down his proposal.
In his exit interview, ironically just before Covid, he said it was "ridiculous" for people to suggest Queenstown had the ‘overtourism’ problems of a Barcelona or Rome.
"The visitor numbers we have are perfectly manageable apart from some transport issues."
Destination and brand GM Sarah O’Donnell says there’s been "an amazing evolution of the direction of DQ" during her 11 years with the RTO.
"We continue to absolutely focus on destination marketing," she says, however they’ve also gone into destination management — "the introduction of the focus on how do we actually look after people and place and then environment as well".
CEO Mat Woods says "Queenstown used the Covid pause to really stop and rethink what we’d like tourism to look like".
Out of it came goals like regenerative tourism, promoting a carbon-zero visitor economy by 2030 and leading annual Electrify Queenstown summits.
There’s a ‘Love Queenstown’ initiative, too, allowing appreciative visitors to help fund local causes.
There’s also now a shared services partnership between DQ and Lake Wanaka Tourism to create back-office efficiencies and more marketing clout.
Woods considers DQ is "one of the most mature RTOs there is in NZ".
"You learn a lot in 40 years ... you get to your 40s and we’re a high-performing organisation.
"We’re really fortunate for the hard work people that came before have done, and our fantastic funding model has actually enabled us to be consistently representing Queenstown internationally.
"We’ve got the biggest holiday arrivals from Australia of any airport in NZ, well, it’s no surprise because for 40 years we’ve been working on that market."
O’Donnell adds: "But it’s not just DQ’s work, we’ve got an amazing set of operators that are innovative, constantly evolving and investing millions in products."
