Context
We challenge QLDC to proactive control and response regarding the district’s visitor growth projections in its annual planning.
There is a stark disconnect between the council’s Carbon Zero by 2030 goal in its Regenerative Tourism Plan, which requires reduced visitor numbers, and the rapidly increasing visitor population projections QLDC uses for investment and infrastructure planning.
In this presentation to the council’s Annual Plan hearing, we ask it to develop feedback processes to enable it to respond to reduced visitor demand more rapidly should its Destination Management Plan demand interventions succeed.
QLDC Annual Plan hearing
May 22, 2023
Kia ora, I am John Hilhorst representing FlightPlan2050
Your Destination Management Plan paints a radically new direction for this district. Its Carbon Zero by 2030 commitment includes the emissions from visitor travel to the district.
This Carbon Zero goal will require substantial interventions to greatly reduce the number of international flights, as there is no way medium to long-haul flights can become carbon zero any time soon, if ever.
Your staff, and those of Destination Queenstown, and Lake Wanaka Tourism are busy working out interventions they can use to deliver the optimal visitation profile for their Carbon Zero by 2030 commitment. Those interventions will aim to reduce international visitor flights.
But the demand projections in your annual plan don’t reflect this new normal. And that’s a problem.
This is particularly worrying regarding Queenstown Airport. As a Council Controlled Trading Organisation, QAC references the demand projections in your long-term plan to inform its SOI and ten-year strategy.
So, while your staff plan market interventions to reduce international visitor flights, QAC – your company which you control – is planning for massive debt-fuelled expansion based on your data.
You own the company and so the airport expansion is your intervention. And that expansion will massively enable additional international flights. This expansion will overwhelm and swamp out all the efforts, commitments, and aspirations of the destination management plan.
It is essential, therefore, that we resolve this disconnect as quickly as possible as the negative consequences for climate change are massive.
You must rapidly review council’s visitor demand projections to reflect your destination management plan so that QAC’s strategy properly aligns with your strategy and the destination management plan.
We know you are required by legislation to plan for growth, and your demand projections need to demonstrate a robust and evidence-based approach based on a clear methodology and sound data points.
So, we accept you can’t just make up a set of numbers to fit the new DMP.
But at the same time, you can’t just sit on your butts. The district is like a massive ship – it takes a lot of effort to change course and needs all hands at the wheel – including yours.
Alongside the data projections, your staff should develop a set of scenarios that consider the effect on demand if particular interventions are in place by certain timelines. These will help you extrapolate future trends, adapt your projections, and avoid expansionary development.
You need a policy and process that ensures your visitor demand projections are highly responsive to this real-world feedback. And this responsiveness must link directly in real-time to all council’s planning documents, including those on three-year review cycles, and to QAC.
Otherwise, the existing projections would lock in years of business-as-usual expansionary investment, such as at the airport, and undermine the efforts to turn this ship.
You have a climate change mandate for systemic change.
- Your council is united on this.
- And residents demand it – with 74% worried about climate change while only 13% are satisfied with the steps Council is taking to reduce the district’s emissions – according to your quality-of-life survey.
- And the Carbon Zero by 2030 commitment in the DMP shows a motivated business community.
You have a mandate and responsibility. This annual plan must resource the development of policies and practices to ensure its demand projections are responsive and positively contribute to your destination management plan aspirations.
Thank you
for your consideration.
Ngā mihi e
noho rā