100 per cent pure carnage

Helen Soothill (26) from Leeds; Marcus McNevin (20) from Dublin and Kerry Drakes (23) from Hull. Photo / Janna Dixon

The English backpacker sits in Auckland's Globe Bar, a hedonistic hotspot for young tourists. He wears a shirt supporting Liverpool but is actually from Doncaster, South Yorkshire.

He sports a wrist brace after suffering a sprain last week when he tried swinging around one of the two poles installed in the bar for drunken, half-naked girls to writhe around.

"That pole attacked me," he says. "Attempting pole dancing while drinking is dangerous."

He arrived in New Zealand two months ago because it was one of the few countries offering a working holiday visas to 34-year-olds. Within three weeks of landing, after a splurge of takeaways and drinking, he was skint. He now works as a casual labourer and lives in a room in Auckland Central Backpackers that, conveniently, occupies the building above the bar.

He plans to travel further afield than Auckland once the weather gets warmer, but until then he's happy at the Globe – a late-night venue that Auckland police describe as a "trouble spot".

"Free food, cheap drinks: What more do you want?" asks the backpacker of his hangout.

This is Shawn Martland. He's the saviour of New Zealand tourism.

The tourism industry accounts for 10 per cent of our GDP and more than 20 per cent of our export earnings. But as the recession has taken grip globally, international travel – a consumer luxury – has dipped in almost all of New Zealand's key tourism markets.

The most recent data from Statistics NZ shows a 4 per cent decline in the number of people visiting New Zealand for a holiday over the last year, and more bad news is expected this summer.

Swine flu badly scared the Asian market, with arrivals plummeting from China (down 39 per cent), the Republic of Korea (down 37 per cent) and Japan (down 57 per cent).

The combination of global recession and global flu has created a perfect storm for a tourism. Malcolm Johns, chief executive of bus and tourism conglomerate InterCity, says the industry weathered the double-hit of the September 11 attacks and the outbreak of avian flu well. But, he says, the current storm is different: "This one is more perfect than any one we've faced before."

The sole bright spot in tourism has been backpackers. "The only thing that's saving our backsides at the moment is the youth market. They don't tend to have investments or mortgages, so their psychological state during these sorts of crises is a lot more stable," says Johns.