Evening Standard
Tourism officials here have taken a London newspaper to task after it published “misrepresentations” about James Cook’s time on the East Coast.
Earlier this week, the Evening Standard newspaper’s website, named the UK media’s “‘website of the year”, published a story — headlined How to follow in the footsteps of Captain Cook in New Zealand — that twice stated this year marked the “350th anniversary” of Cook’s landfall.
This year is, in fact, the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival on the East Coast.
Activate Tairawhiti tourism general manager Adam Hughes, who was quoted in the article, pointed out other issues.
“The article has a big factual error and in my opinion has a number of misrepresentations by the journalist.
“For example, the reference to the ‘350th anniversary’ is factually incorrect and easily picked up with a quick check.
“I was represented as being a ‘Gisborne local of Maori descent’ when in fact I am a current Gisborne resident and I don’t have direct whakapapa links to te Tairawhiti iwi and therefore am not tangata whenua (people of the land). As such, I’m not comfortable to be quoted in print like this.
“I could keep addressing each of the misrepresentations, however, my advice if people want to find out more about Cook is there are many books available at the Gisborne library or get out into the local landscape and walk the Tupapa – Our Stand. Our Story heritage experience, which tells the stories of tangata whenua by tangata whenua.”
Mr Hughes pointed out that Activate Tairawhiti, the region’s tourism organisation, did not pay for the journalist to come to Gisborne.
“The journalist from the Evening Standard was in New Zealand last November and visited Tairawhiti as part of a larger trip with the Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) International Media Programme.
“As requested by TNZ, I supported the activity in my role as general manager tourism for Activate Tairawhiti by connecting the journalist/TNZ to the local tourism experience providers featured in the story (Cycle Gisborne & Railbike Adventures) and hosting him for dinner to give an insight into tourism throughout our region.
“As I understand it the article is not expected to appear elsewhere and I have contacted TNZ about requesting corrections.”
The online article has since been corrected to read 250th anniversary.
Despite the historical inaccuracies, the overall article provided a positive vision of Gisborne’s tourism attractions, with the writer highlighting the Spade Oak and Millton wineries, as well as Gisborne Railbike Adventures, Gisborne’s “golden” beaches and the “ethereal” Lake Waikaremoana.
A series of events has been organised to commemorate the sestercentennial anniversary of the first meeting between the crew of the Endeavour and Maori, starting in October.
Mr Hughes said while he did not know how many visitors to expect, he was aware a lot of accommodation providers were already at capacity for the key October dates.
“There is an expectation of a large number of visitors but with the current national visitor data it is hard to tell in advance as the most robust way to measure visitors and visitor impact is through the MBIE (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) electronic spend data, and that is only available a month later (after the event).”