David Simmons

speaker

37 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 13 Jul

David Simmons’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Detail · A clear direction for councils on tourism · 13 Jul 2026 podcast

It's very comprehensive and it does some important new things.

So I think it does indicate a potentially significant step in the maturation of the whole sector.

I think the most important thing really is that it has for the first time really reached out to and engaged territorial local authorities in tourism policy and hopefully implementation.

Now, some of the early plans, just looking back, I recollect one of them had of its sort of 45 or 48 recommendations, 40 of them were directed at territorial local authorities.

Now, why are territorial local authorities important?

Well, quite simply is that we may promote largely at a national level and we may talk about the national economic gains,

But the real point of focus for tourism management is where does the tire or where does the foot hit the road?

And in that sense, territorial local authorities are right at the front of that.

So when a tourist turns up, whether it's in a rental car, camper van, coach,

or even on a bike these days, what they do require is parking.

They have a big impact on infrastructure, particularly water, and then waste streams, both liquid and material waste streams.

And obviously they're attracted to places because of amenities.

So they're drawn by museums, they're drawn by parks, gardens, esplanades, and the general amenity values of a place.

And in the background, of course, in a high risk country such as New Zealand, they're also dependent on territorial local authorities for the management of risks and disaster recovery and the like.

So we've got an additional city, about our 10th largest city, on the move every night.

And so at a very important level, tourism is fundamentally urbanising.

It just creates more volume, more pressure on infrastructure.

And that is felt very unevenly over the numerous territorial local authorities that we have in New Zealand.

So it is most important that territorial local authorities are engaged in the management of tourism.

So they're not only, and then unlike central government where these functions are separated between, say, a Ministry of Tourism and a tourism policy group inside MV or the Department of Conservation, you have both marketing and management side by side in territorial local authorities.

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