Source: Radio New Zealand
The three-day event was expected to generate more than 60,000 visitor nights at hotels.
The Hotel Council Aoetaroa says events are a big part of turning Auckland’s central business district into a central entertainment district.
A Jehovah’s Witness Convention in the city over the weekend has been forecast to boost the city’s economy by more than $20 million.
The three-day event was expected to generate more than 60,000 visitor nights with hotel occupancy at 85 percent.
Hotel Council Aotearoa strategic director James Doolan told Morning Report he was hoping the opening of Auckland’s international convention centre next month would bring in more events.
“You hear people talking about tourism in New Zealand and trying to get back to pre-Covid levels, but really we need to be about 130 percent of pre-Covid levels, because 2019 is seven years ago now…”
“We need more international and domestic visitors, we’ve also got a very, very expensive railway link in Auckland and fewer people actually go into the CBD to work, so we have to turn our CBD, our central business district, into a central entertainment district, and events are a big part of that,” Doolan said.
Doolan said large events were needed to fill out hotels.
“Events attract people to Auckland and it creates what’s called compression, because we have about 14,000 hotel rooms in Auckland, we’re a big city, so 14,000 hotel rooms that need to be sold out 365 days of the year,” he said.
“The only way you do that is if you also have events, you can’t just have [Free Independent Travel].”
Doolan said large events like the Jehovah’s Witness Convention took years to plan.
“You also need to pay what’s called subvention payments for some of these events, and that’s essentially a cash incentive to encourage an event to come to New Zealand or Auckland instead of many of the competitor destinations around the world.”
It made sense for central government to invest in sensible incentives and subvention funding, Doolan said.
“Every dollar that a tourist spends in New Zealand, they also pay GST on top of those dollars, and international tourism is one of the only export sectors where Central Government collects GST.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
