Twenty leading tourism experts will converge on Queenstown for a new, two-day tourism summit next month.
Organised by the University of Otago's Department of Tourism, the inaugural Tourism Policy School will focus on the impact, value, and sustainability of tourism.
Speakers will include World Travel and Tourism Council member Helen Marano, Department of Conservation director general Lou Sanson, Tourism Industry Aotearoa's Bruce Bassett, and Tourism Export Council NZ chief executive Judy Chen.
Department of Tourism Professor James Higham said the policy school was an "opportunity to bring together expertise from government, industry, business and academia to discuss and debate the challenges facing the tourism industry''.
"We are in a period of sustained growth. It's predicted that 5 million international tourists will visit New Zealand by 2023.
"There are questions around cost and benefit of tourism that need to be asked, and we need to further build our efforts to move beyond numbers of visitors as the key measure of industry success.''
Holding the event in Queenstown was significant, he said.
"Queenstown is facing its own unique issues of sustained high tourism growth, infrastructure and capacity constraints, social and environmental impacts and social licence. It is certainly starting to strain and creak under the pressures of constant growth in visitor arrivals.''
The event starts with a public lecture by Switzerland Tourism head of markets Urs Eberhart on Thursday, March 7.
The Tourism Policy School will be opened by Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis, and is a full day event on March 8.
Fifty people will attend the policy school, which Prof Higham hoped would be become an annual event.
