Green means business

By SIMON HENDERY

Green Party MP Mike Ward wants to charge all overseas visitors a $100 conservation and heritage levy when they arrive in New Zealand.

Ward told delegates at the Green Globe 21 Sustainable Tourism Conference in Kaikoura last week that the levy was not official Green Party policy - "yet".

But if implemented, he said, it would provide hundreds of millions of dollars for the upkeep of the country's conservation estate, galleries and museums.

"For their $100, visitors would receive a package of gallery and park hut passes and a copy of a volume of facts, anecdotes and photos produced annually and depicting our culture, history and which also illustrates some of the projects which their levy contributes to."

Critics will mock the idea as the type of whimsy generated at a gathering of greenie tourism operators.

On present arrival numbers, the levy would raise more than $210 million a year if all short-term visitors to the country were charged.

But any serious attempt to implement such a tax would bring howls of protest from the industry, which would argue it was unfair and a marketing nightmare in the competitive global tourism arena.

While last week's first international Green Globe 21 conference may have provided a forum for the likes of the free-thinking Ward, it was also a significant event which focused on a major issue for New Zealand, tourism sustainability.

Green Globe 21 is a 10-year-old environmental benchmarking standard for the travel and tourism industry.

Its logo resembles the Heart Foundation tick and there are other similarities between the two schemes.

Green Globe accreditation indicates a tourism business has passed a green health check, providing reassurance for the growing army of environmentally aware international travellers, increasing numbers of whom are eyeing New Zealand as a destination.

The organisation chose to hold its inaugural international conference in Kaikoura because the town is home to a high-profile green tourism activity, whale watching, and has been a strong supporter of the Green Globe scheme.

The Kaikoura District Council has reached benchmarked status, the second of three levels under the scheme, and has the ambitious goal of becoming one of the first communities in New Zealand and Australia to reach the third and ultimate level - Green Globe certification.

Tourism Minister Mark Burton told the conference that New Zealand needed to deliver on its "100 per cent Pure" marketing catchline if it was to make the most of tourism.

"The future of the industry rests on all tourism operators adopting sustainable practices in every aspect of their business, and in ensuring that New Zealand's tourism product is always of exceptional quality."

While the need to embrace sustainability is universally accepted by the industry, debate continues on how to achieve it.

One issue is that Green Globe is just one of more than 100 eco-tourism schemes worldwide.

However, Kaikoura Mayor Jim Abernethy told Tourism New Zealand publication Tourism News this month that Green Globe's key advantage was that "compared to other schemes which have no pressure or incentive to keep improving, if you don't improve with Green Globe, you don't stay accredited".

Abernethy said his council became involved in Green Globe because it "could see the importance of environmental concerns".

Through the scheme the community had gained valuable knowledge about issues such as energy use, waste, climate change and air quality, he said.

"With tourist numbers increasing, we had to be responsible. Most visitors to Kaikoura are environmentalists, they've come to Kaikoura to see the whales and sea mammals and beautiful mountains, so they're concerned about nature."


GREEN GLOBE 21

An international benchmarking and certification programme promoting sustainable travel and tourism for consumers, companies and communities.

Based on Agenda 21 and principles for Sustainable Development endorsed by 182 Governments at the UN's Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992.

Three levels of participation: awareness, benchmarking and certification.

150 companies are fully benchmarked or certified, including 27 in New Zealand.