In 2020, 31 RTOS were given $47million to develop the plans, but Mr Nash told University of Otago’s tourism school last week he was surprised to learn less than half had done so.
In a webinar with the Queenstown Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday night, it was submitted to Mr Nash getting "all the players to buy into a new way of working is a massive task", particularly in the Queenstown-Lakes.
Mr Nash responded: "I don’t think it’s that difficult, to be honest".
"I think it’s taken too long for a number of these [stakeholders] organisations to ... come up with a framework and then go out and consult and put meat on that framework ... and articulate that in a way that everyone buys in to."
While he accepted RTOs were being asked to "do things differently", for the past two years places like Queenstown had "suffered a lot", yet pre-Covid a residents’ survey showed 70% of people in the Wakatipu believed there were "too many international tourists".
"In terms of building tourism back in Queenstown, the RTO needs to understand some of those frustrations that existed beforehand, seek to find solutions to those issues and then get buy-in from all stakeholders ...
"It is about consulting, it’s about painting a vision, but it shouldn’t take two years to do — it shouldn’t even take a year to do, in my opinion."
In terms of barriers for the area to overcome for economic diversification, Mr Nash believed the power supply was a major one.
He had heard about the issues with the integrity of the power supply and during a week-long Institute of Directors course in Queenstown, at the beginning of February, the power went off once or twice.
"If you’re running a really high-tech business, you’ve got to have security of power ... and internet and all this fantastic stuff that will attract the really innovative, high-end investors and developers."
When asked, he did not rule out the potential for the Government to consider funding support for innovation in infrastructure, like alternative power supplies.
"I won’t say no — give me a proposal and let’s see where it leads.
"It’s never out of the realms of possibility, so let’s look at innovative ways to overcome some of the issues."
However, an announcement would be forthcoming about alternative Government-backed financing to support businesses to transition, given bank lending criteria had created hurdles.
Mr Nash said he and Finance Minister Grant Robertson were working on that at present.
"I can’t make any announcements at the moment, but we do recognise with shallow capital markets and banks that I don’t think are particularly friendly to business investors, we believe there’s a gap in the market.
"It’s something we are aware of and we are looking at."
