Safety prime focus of industry

Significant safety improvements have been initiated and embedded within the tourism industry, according to Tourism Industry Association New Zealand chief executive Martin Snedden.

The time has come to defend the safety culture within New Zealand's adventure tourism industry. I'm deeply sorry for the families of the nine people killed in the Fox Glacier plane crash. The families are naturally still grieving and have an absolute right to strongly express their views. But, within the emotion of this incredibly sad and avoidable accident, please do not underestimate what has already been and what is now being achieved.

The fact is, significant safety improvements have been initiated and embedded within the industry since the 2009-10 Labour Department Adventure Safety Review.

Adventure tourism inherently carries risk for participants. But the customer has an absolute right to expect that processes are in place to eliminate avoidable risk. Sadly, that was not the case in the Fox Glacier crash. No-one is trying to defend these types of accidents, but we are focused on applying the learnings as quickly and effectively as possible.

Since the Fox Glacier crash, changes have been and are still being made in the adventure aviation sector. CAA regulations have been tightened. Safety awareness has heightened. In the 2009-10 Labour Department review, there was recognition most operators were responsible and safe but that a much better nationwide risk management framework was needed. Operators have enthusiastically been part of the subsequent and ongoing change process. These operators know primary responsibility for the safety of their customers rests on their shoulders.

''Adventure Safety'' is one of five major strategic priorities for the Tourism Industry Association (TIA), which has close to 400 adventure and outdoor operators among our 1500 members. We have two skilled senior staff dedicated fulltime to delivery of this strategy. In early 2011, the Department of Labour contracted the TIA, with the support of Outdoors New Zealand, to create a website dedicated to safety in adventure tourism.

SupportAdventure.co.nz was launched in May 2012 and is the first website of its kind in the world. It includes comprehensive safety information and advice, and acts as a safety information and benchmarking tool for operators and regulators. Since 2011, TIA, using the skills and experience of senior private adventure operators and other experts, has been creating world-leading adventure safety guidelines customised for specific activities.

The first set of these - covering canyoning, caving and indoor rock climbing - are now in use. The next set - covering heli-skiing, quad-biking, high-wire crossing, and abseiling - are under development and will be launched later this year. The TIA will continue this process until all high-risk adventure activities have been covered.

While these are ''guidelines'' rather than ''regulations'', operators know that, in the case of an accident investigation, their actions will be judged against these standards. A key difference between guidelines and regulations is their ability to be changed quickly in light of new information within a dynamic sector.

The fact these guidelines have been developed in concert with, rather than in isolation from, operators has given them much greater accuracy, credibility and speedy acceptance by operators.

In addition, both the TIA and Outdoors New Zealand have provided strong support and advice to the Labour Group (now within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) and to operators on safety initiatives around the new adventure activity regulations, such as external auditing, registration, and drug and alcohol testing.

Last Friday in Wellington, the TIA hosted the inaugural ''Great Adventure'' adventure and outdoor tourism conference. This is another sign the industry is becoming more cohesive. Safety, and the events of this week, will be firmly on the radar of all conference delegates. These operators are proud of what they have achieved for tourism in New Zealand, and they know their future reputation and success is inextricably linked to them showing to the world this is a safe industry.