Why Whakatane is way, way, way below the tourism radar

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Tourism is a really big part of Whakatane's economy.  We have multiple businesses offering chartered fishing trips, dolphin watching excursions, horse treks, kayaking adventures, bush walks, craft markets, surfing schools, and who knows what else?
At Christmas, every holiday park and motel is booked out.  And yet, very few of the tourism businesses in Whakatane and around this area are represented by tourism wholesalers to travel agents in, for example, Germany.


Why not?







The main organisation for marketing New Zealand overseas is called the Inbound Tour Operators Council (ITOC).  All of the travel wholesalers who market New Zealand tourism internationally
 are members of ITOC.  Travel wholesalers are big businesses.  To join the ITOC, you have to have have a minimum annual turnover of $500,000 and have already traded as an inbound tour operator for at least a year.  They have to have Public Liability insurance to a minimum of $5million.  They pay $2395 per year for membership.    


The members of ITOC have agreed to prefer trade with each other, and with allied members of ITOC.  Allied members are smaller companies that are (hopefully) marketed by the tourism wholesalers.
Becoming an allied member isn't so bad really, you just have to be endorsed by Qualmark (New Zealand tourism's quality authority)and pay an annual fee of $655.


If you are not an allied member of ITOC there's a very low chance that the wholesalers will mention you to a travel agent overseas, and yet most of the tourism operators in this region are not members.  I know this because I have a copy of ITOC's member directory in front of me as I write this.  But, given that ITOC representation is so important, surely there must be a good reason why so few people have joined?


Here are some of the reasons why they haven't joined.  Let me know if you can think of any more:


1.  This is a fairly poor area, so it's difficult for people to get start-up capital. This means that getting the business up to Qualmark standards, paying for Qualmark inspections, then paying for ITOC membership seems like a big, expensive, extravagant risk that they don't know how to justify to their families or the bank.  ($655 is two weeks' rent for a three-bedroom house!)


2. Most of the operators are getting enough money to make a living from local tourism, for which Qualmark and ITOC membership are not necessary.  


3.  The low incomes of operators who have started from nothing and are surviving on local tourism make them risk averse.  They regard spending money on organisation memberships and advertising to be a risk.


4.  If they join ITOC, they still can't control the marketing decisions of the wholesalers, who will probably go to markets that are not attracted to Whakatane, or may prefer to send clients to even bigger players in the tourism industry.  Whether or not this is actually the case, I don't know, but it is certainly something to think about.


5.  Most of the tourism operators in this area didn't really study tourism at university.  A lot of them are farmers or fishermen, nurses and school teachers.  A lot of them still work in those jobs to supplement their incomes.  For this reason, they don't always make the best strategic decisions.


6.  Whakatane doesn't even have a HOTEL!  We have lots of motels (one motel may house about 15 families), but it seems that tour operators with big tour-groups like to put all their guests in the same hotel.


So, if you come to Whakatane, you really are going off the radar.  There are plenty of perfectly safe, entertaining tour guides around here.  They probably cost less than their ITOC cousins, but the quality may vary.   Some of the operators have Qualmark, but most of them don't.
If you want to come here, I would recommend you travel independently and play it by ear.  Find a nice place to stay, and every morning, take a look at the weather and then decide what you would like to do. There are miles and miles of beautiful beach, at least six cafes and even a few bars.  There is White Island, the volcanic island just offshore, where you can go by boat or airplane to take a look.   In the summer, the local government organises public events for tourists which can be entertaining (for example, the local golf club organises tournaments for holiday-makers).  


Of course, Whakatane isn't the only place in New Zealand that is "beneath the radar".  While the big tourist attractions are great, there is so much more to see if you are brave enough to go wandering.  I hope that this blog will help you to get information about these places.  That said, I plan to write soon about the big players, just so you don't miss them!