International tourism’s ‘double whammy’

It’s already been a difficult time for tourism operators, especially those who’s destinations involve ‘long haul’ flights.

Although people’s incomes have been rising, so have the growing conversations about sustainability and how consumers need to think about the size of their carbon footprint they leave. You’d imagine that this would already be having some impact upon tourism, particularly in New Zealand where we are so far away from many of our more lucrative international tourist / traveller markets.

As if that wasn’t enough, the growing global ‘credit crunch’ is likely to exacerbate this problem. Perhaps it’s time for us to look at Australia as a short-haul, ‘home market’ – with flying times to NZ that are similar to flight destinations within Australia, it seems like it might be a good time to convince Australians to come down and check New Zealand out!