Sapphire Nightclub on Fort Lane. Photo / heartofthecity
As director of destination for Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, Annie Dundas would love the city to host a tournament like the Fifa Women’s World Cup every winter.
The 2023 event put Auckland on the world stage, saw an out-of-season influx of international visitors and delivered a significant economic benefit.
Yet there’s more to attracting tourists than international sporting tournaments. “I would love to see a balanced year-round calendar of amazing activity that keeps our locals engaged and happy and keeps our hotels and restaurants full,” says Dundas. “Both drawcards require funding. That’s the challenge if we are to build a pipeline of major events.
“Auckland faces a serious shortfall in funding for major events. The tourism sector is ready, the city is prepared, and businesses are now looking for a long-term sustainable source of funding that is independent of local and central government cycles.
“If we can get surety of funding, we can proactively go out and look for great new things to make sure there is something happening every year as we would like it to. There are endless opportunities for Auckland”.
There are opportunities beyond large events. While the number of inbound tourists has recovered well since the border was closed in the early stages of the Covid pandemic, the number of services flying into Auckland has yet to return to the earlier highs. Dundas acknowledges that Auckland Airport is addressing that problem. Meanwhile, “We don’t run full all year, which means there are certain months and seasons where we can shift the dial. A lot of our activity centres on markets where these are opportunities. We work closely with partners in China and across Asia, particularly in India. Our winter months are a great time for Indians to travel here and we have plenty of available capacity.” She says there is potential for direct flights from India in the near future and that will bring a huge opportunity. “The US remains the shining star in terms of international arrivals and the amount visitors spend. We are doing a lot of work in the US market to attract visitors here during our shoulder seasons”. (The shoulder season is the period between peak and off-peak travel times when fares are lower). Australia remains the biggest market, but Dundas says it is much more competitive and there is an issue with capacity. Auckland has lost some transtasman capacity in recent months in part due to Air New Zealand’s much-publicised engine issues which have grounded up to 11 planes. On top of this, Virgin Australia has yet to resume Auckland flights. This means that, for now at least, transtasman flights are close to fully booked with business travellers and with people visiting friends or family. This has put upward pressure on fares. The other challenge is that Auckland competes for Australian tourists with the South Island ski resorts which are popular in winter months. Auckland does attract visitors from Queensland and increasingly from Sydney and Melbourne. Tātaki Auckland Unlimited has a Destination Partnership Programme that is an industry marketing initiative to attract visitors to the city. “We spend the lion’s share of those funds in Australia,” Dundas says. “It centres on our urban story but also tells them about Waiheke Island which is a rural oasis sitting on our doorstep. That story about proximity to nature, great food and wine is very strong. We’ve also got an incredible golf story with the opening of Te Arai Links which is only 70 or 80 minutes up the motorway from downtown Auckland. “We have a lot of new products that are unfamiliar to Australians. We get a lot of feedback from Australians who visit Auckland. We find those who haven’t been here for a while are really impressed by the quality of our hotel accommodation, which they tell us is as good as it is in Sydney. They tell us our local food scene is incredible; and they love the easy access to nature, including the Hauraki Gulf. It’s not only Waiheke; they have discovered Great Barrier Island and other spots. “While Sydney and other Australian destinations have many of these attributes, their beaches are jam packed, here they can have a different experience.” The other aspect of Auckland that appeals to many Australian visitors is our Māori culture. They find it interesting and intriguing, they’re interested in finding ways to engage with it. Australia is the key focus for Tātaki Auckland Unlimited because it represents such a huge opportunity; the visitor numbers have yet to fully recover to pre-Covid levels. It’s a significant market with 745,000 business, holiday and family visitors arriving here last year from across the Tasman. In comparison there are around 300,000 visitors from the US. They are predominantly holiday visitors and spend more money while here. Historically, Auckland has not been celebrated for its nightlife. Dundas says that’s changing. “We want Auckland to be seen as somewhere that has an active nightlife, so that visitors and locals feel energy, vibrancy and so on”. Tātaki Auckland Unlimited researched Auckland’s nighttime economy to understand the effects of the pandemic and the switch to more people working from home. The results were surprising. “The research told us that 55% of all spending in the city is after six o’clock at night. We found the way people use the city at night is changing. People working from home often don’t come in on Friday. Which means Thursday has become the new Friday.” The next step is adapting strategies to deal with the new pattern of nighttime activity. This could mean providing better transport links. She says in the past ferries would operate later services on a Friday, but maybe they should switch to Thursday: “There are a lot of levers we need to pull to make sure people know things are going on in the city. Safety remains an issue, but we need to work on ideas like pick-up and drop-off zones to make it easier for people to get in and out safely. We’re working on initiatives with stakeholders across the city centre to improve the night economy.” Dundas says this will step up again when the City Rail Link and the International Convention Centre open next year. “It’s an amazing time to talk about how the nighttime can be activated, we are getting our ducks in a row in readiness”.Discover more
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63% of commuters changed travel habits due to smart city initiative.