Business award winner 'just getting started'

Warren Harford sees winning the title of Red Stag Rotorua Business Person of the Year as a starting point - not a swansong.
"It's fantastic, but I'm just getting started!" the Agrodome managing director told The Daily Post.
The Rotorua attraction has just completed its most successful financial year since it launched in 1971 and work on a $1million revamp of the Agrodome entrance starts in March. "We want to modernise the place and get it looking really good for the Rugby World Cup."
Changes include moving the cafe into the main complex, extending into the carpark area and creating a new entrance with facilities for conference and incentives visitors. "It should be completed by July. We have a huge February, with the Chinese New Year and cruise ships, so we can't start earlier."
While numbers have been down in the past year, Asian markets were starting to come back after the swine-flu pandemic and Mr Harford said visitor spending had increased, leading to a record turnover in 2009/10. Business was also good at Agrodome's Japanese attraction, just outside Tokyo, and the company was looking at a second attraction in the north of the country.
Locally, the attraction will celebrate its 40th birthday next year and he is proud it is still a family partnership - now into its third generation. But Mr Harford is as excited about momentum building in Rotorua. "This place is going to boom. I wish we could get more people to feel that excitement."
He hopes the visitor sector will support the new Rotorua District Council tourism committee. "It's fabulous. We have fought for two to three years to get that in place."
Mr Harford served on the Rotorua Tourism Board for 19 years, but said it had not been the right model to take the industry forward the way the new structure could.
Transtasman flights into Rotorua Airport had already brought a rise in the Agrodome's family market and Harford said the services held huge potential. "It has largely been the 'visiting friends and relatives' market so far, but Australians are getting to know Rotorua as a destination and we are seeing more coming for holidays."
He predicts the Ruapehu skifields will start to see some real benefits from the flights next winter and said the Central Park region could tap into the longer-haul markets through Sydney.
"We could become a more global inbound destination. The South American market into Australia is hundreds of per cent more than New Zealand and the potential is huge if we can convince that market to extend holidays into New Zealand, through Rotorua."
During 18 years with the Inbound Tourism Operators Council, Mr Harford said he had built up a good picture of the tourism industry nationwide. While he was positive about the city's future and investments by companies such as Rainbow Springs and Skyline Rotorua, he insisted Rotorua could not rest on its reputation as the tourism and cultural capital of New Zealand.
"Some businesses have really lifted their game. They recognise all the regions are competing now - it's not just Rotorua and Queenstown. We have to make sure what we are offering is of the highest international standard."
For all his experience and success, Mr Harford remains humble about his award win. "There are far better business people about, with some really successful companies. It is great to be acknowledged as being up there with them somewhere."