The fifth in five years, Louise Upston accepts churn in the role is "challenging" for Queenstown at a time when the community’s social licence for visitor growth continues to fray at the edges.
Upston, who assumed the role from Matt Doocey in a cabinet reshuffle a month ago, says she’s here to learn about the resort’s "challenges and opportunities".
She spent Tuesday here meeting tourism big-hitters, Queenstown mayor Glyn Lewers and Destination Queenstown reps.
As expected, her responses to Mountain Scene questions about Queenstown’s recently revived bed tax proposal, groaning infrastructure, and regenerative tourism and carbon zero goals were mostly of the garden variety: "I’ve got an open mind" and "absolutely keen to have a listen to what people think".
However, she reckons the government’s not wasting any time in the tourism portfolio.
"A lot of the work my predecessor Matthew Doocey has done I’ve picked up.
"And if you think about the announcements we’ve made in the past couple of weeks ... we’re working at pace."
The overall message remains clear: a ‘bums-on-seats’ approach to tourism is a main plank in the government’s growth agenda.
"For most places around the country, the focus is growth, and that has to be job number one — getting the visitor numbers back," Upston says.
Last week Scene reported in the 2024 calendar year total passengers through Queenstown Airport hit 2,566,493 — that’s up from 2,410,615 in 2023 and the previous peak, in ’19, of 2,313,319.
Upston’s visit coincided with the highlighting of a residents’ survey which shows Queenstown has the lowest tourism approval rating in the country.
The survey’s in a regional deals proposal — signed off by Queenstown’s council this week.
It warns that without more investment, the resort risks "becoming the next Barcelona", where there have been protests against mass tourism.
Upston says she recognises Queenstown has unique challenges, but suggests visitors are getting the blame for "pressure points" on its infrastructure, when residential growth is the real culprit.
On the bed tax, which was about to pass into law five years ago before Covid struck, she points to the existing International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy as a funding source — from which Queenstown’s council’s yet to receive a dollar, but is being used to market the country internationally — and says the government has to "look very carefully at any additional costs that we put on visitors in the short term".
"I accept there are funding challenges, but there are also challenges in different parts of the country ... for a country our size, you don’t want to have 30 different versions of [a bed tax] across New Zealand."
