Planning tourism with purpose & love in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty

Kristin Dun­ne’s “eyes were opened” to pos­sib­il­it­ies for travel & tour­ism that she could not ignore; pos­sib­il­it­ies based on pur­pose, place, and pas­sion­ate people. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, the des­tin­a­tion man­ager shares Tour­ism Bay of Plenty’s Te Hā Tāpoi | The Love of Tour­ism.

Kia ora koutou from Aotearoa (New Zealand).

I am priv­ileged to be tumuaki (chief exec­ut­ive) for Tāpoi Te Moananui ā Toi | Tour­ism Bay of Plenty in Te Moananui ā Toi (the Coastal Bay of Plenty) on Te Tai Rāwhiti (the east coast) of our Te Ika-a-Māui (North Island).

One day, when it is safe to do so, we hope to open our home to manuhiri ki tāwāhi (inter­na­tion­al vis­it­ors) again and wel­come you with our spe­cial man­aakit­anga (hos­pit­al­ity and warm welcome).

We searched for purpose, found love

In 2016 we set about under­stand­ing what value Tour­ism Bay of Plenty could add to our stake­hold­ers. It is safe to say that we were strug­gling with both rel­ev­ance and respect as an organ­isa­tion. And intern­ally we didn’t under­stand our “why?”; our purpose.

The jour­ney we are on was not ori­gin­ally fore­seen. It was only through a shift in my own con­scious­ness that my eyes were opened to the pos­sib­il­it­ies of the change that we are now try­ing to be. Rais­ing the con­scious­ness of oth­ers to gain sup­port for our kaupapa (cause) is a con­tinu­ous pri­or­ity. Thus we have been shar­ing our work freely in the hope that we can con­trib­ute to nation­al and inter­na­tion­al thought lead­er­ship for pur­pose-driv­en des­tin­a­tion management.

The shift of con­scious­ness that I exper­i­enced seems to have accel­er­ated rap­idly in the minds of oth­ers in the post-COV­ID-19 con­text. This is encour­aging. So my main focus now is shift­ing from thought lead­er­ship to lead­er­ship in action.

Whilst we are only at the begin­ning of our jour­ney, I thought I would focus this art­icle on some of what we have done to shift towards tour­ism with purpose. 

Break­ing that down as suc­cinctly as pos­sible, there are three key dif­fer­ences in our approach thus far that I hope will be of interest to oth­er inquis­it­ive practitioners:

1. Incorporate indigenous wisdom into destination management

At times, our work is acknow­ledged as new and innov­at­ive, yet it is steeped in deep his­tory. The basis of our des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment plan, Te Hā Tāpoi | The Love of Tour­ism (PDF), comes from the wis­dom of the indi­gen­ous people of Aotearoa, the Māori. We have done our best to hon­our Māori prin­ciples and val­ues, trans­late them into main­stream des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment prin­ciples, and make the con­cepts access­ible to others. 

We work in part­ner­ship with iwi and hapū (indi­gen­ous tribes and sub-tribes) to:

• Ensure Māori are front and centre in place-mak­ing devel­op­ment ini­ti­at­ives, and remind pub­lic and private investors that tangata when­ua (the people of the land) are the acknow­ledged and right­ful landowners;
• Invest in a Kaihautū (Māori eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment lead­er), who works with iwi and hapū to cre­ate part­ner­ships and opportunities;
• Tell the truth in our storytelling and under­stand his­tory from mul­tiple perspectives;
• Strive for Māori cul­tur­al infu­sion in our mar­ket­ing and com­mu­nic­a­tions (a Māori com­mu­nic­a­tions advisor guides us); and
• Bet­ter under­stand te ao Māori, tik­anga, and te reo (the Māori world view, cus­toms, and lan­guage) and be more aware of our unin­ten­ded bias, racism, and privilege.

Our part­ner­ship with tangata when­ua (the people of the land) has enriched our think­ing and our work. And as we work togeth­er to cre­ate more authen­t­ic cul­tur­al vis­it­or exper­i­ences, our manuhiri (vis­it­ors) will be forever enriched also.

2. Seek community permission, inspiration, protection, regeneration

If innate indi­gen­ous wis­dom reminds us about kaitiakit­anga (guard­i­an­ship), then our com­munity reminds us that our ‘des­tin­a­tion’ is a home. We can only share it with the com­munity’s permission. 

Also see Jim Butcher­’s “GT” Insight “Tourism’s demo­crat­ic deficit”

Con­nect­ing with our res­id­ents is now one of four key long-term strategies. We did our best to engage com­munity and oth­er stake­hold­ers to co-cre­ate Te Hā Tāpoi | The Love of Tour­ism. Dur­ing that pro­cess they gave us the pur­pose we had been search­ing for. 

And it all came down to love. Love of place and the wish to pro­tect it for future gen­er­a­tions were what we all shared in common.

Our com­munity con­ver­sa­tions pushed us bey­ond the rel­at­ive com­forts of sus­tain­ab­il­ity to the concept of regen­er­a­tion. Just as regen­er­a­tion is con­tinu­ous, so is our learn­ing. We are work­ing with regen­er­at­ive prac­ti­tion­ers to embrace the lead­er­ship, think­ing, and cul­ture that will cre­ate the con­di­tions for our place and its people to thrive in the future.

3. Promote not only place, but also people and their passions

Our des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment plan, Te Hā Tāpoi | The Love of Tour­ism, seeks to share our love of place, invite vis­it­ors who will love it too, and pro­tect it from being loved to death. 

Also see Mal­colm Roughead’s “GT” Insight
“Scot­tish tour­ism plans trans­form­a­tion­al path to post-COV­ID recovery”

We have put Te Hā Tāpoi into prac­tice through com­munity-led action:

• We have worked with our com­munity and Des­tin­a­tion Think! to artic­u­late the region’s Place DNA™ and determ­ine who we are; our authen­ti­city and unique­ness in the world. Bay of Plenty’s Place DNA™ is now at the heart of all we do, and we act­ively work to devel­op, enhance, and share the authen­t­ic soul of our place.
• We have worked with Des­tin­a­tion Think! to under­stand ‘pas­siono­graphy’; to match DNA themes with the pas­sions of our pre­ferred manuhiri (vis­it­ors). This has fun­da­ment­ally changed our approach to mar­ket­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions as we try to dir­ectly con­nect res­id­ents with vis­it­ors who share their passions.
• We have star­ted to estab­lish ‘pas­sion groups’ based on the ele­ments of our DNA. These are groups of people with­in our com­munity who share a pas­sion. They come togeth­er to plan how they want their DNA theme to devel­op and how they want those stor­ies told. We sup­port the com­munity-led actions as much as we can, but the self-igni­tion, energy, and determ­in­a­tion of these groups has been inspiring.
• We have hired a ‘regen­er­at­or’ to — among oth­er things — work along­side key stake­hold­ers in our ‘Back to Life’ pro­gram, and with Anna Pol­lock and Michelle Hol­l­i­day. This is to ensure that we all under­stand tourism’s rela­tion­ship to place, and how we might cre­ate more har­mony and col­lab­or­a­tion between res­id­ents and visitors.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good

A key chal­lenge along the jour­ney so far has been col­lect­ively ‘not know­ing’. This has been fur­ther com­poun­ded by the envir­on­ment of volat­il­ity, uncer­tainty, com­plex­ity, and ambi­gu­ity cre­ated by COVID-19. Ambi­gu­ity and uncer­tainty are uncom­fort­able modes for some people to oper­ate with­in at the best of times. When man­aging change, and dur­ing a crisis, one must become com­fort­able not know­ing the answers to ques­tions; the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns.

Also see Car­ol Chap­lin’s “GT” Insight
“Over­tour­ism to no tour­ism and back: What is Lake Tahoe’s ‘new normal’?”

Linked to this uncer­tainty is the chal­lenge of simply becom­ing com­fort­able tak­ing steps in the hope that they are in the right dir­ec­tion. One can nev­er know what the whole jour­ney will look like, or wheth­er there will ever be an end to it. We have come to appre­ci­ate that mov­ing for­ward with a new world view is more import­ant than wait­ing to do things per­fectly. It is much more import­ant to think, feel, and act, than to pro­mote our actions.

More func­tion­ally, there is a con­sid­er­able lack of invest­ment in tour­ism innov­a­tion, let alone the research and insights required to meas­ure and man­age the sec­tor effect­ively. Fund­ing for tour­ism in New Zea­l­and is sig­ni­fic­antly con­strained and it leads to poor out­comes for all stake­hold­ers. I have con­sid­er­able hope that the New Zea­l­and Tour­ism Futures Taskforce will bring net-value think­ing and prac­tice to Aotearoa.

In any case, the Bay of Plenty is just a small region in a small coun­try. We move for­ward regard­less with the hope that we can over­come chal­lenges by con­nect­ing with like-minded regions and coun­tries; becom­ing part of a groundswell that can­not be ignored. Loc­ally, it will be our manuhiri (vis­it­ors) and res­id­ents who vote with their choices, hope­fully based on their shared val­ues: A love of place and a pur­pose­ful want to pro­tect it for future generations.

Our journey continues …

At Tour­ism Bay of Plenty we look up to our vis­ion, which is sym­bol­ised as Te Punga, the South­ern Cross. This con­stel­la­tion is vis­ible in the South­ern Hemi­sphere sky and has been used to guide Poly­ne­sian trav­el­lers for mil­len­nia. In Māori cul­ture, Te Punga was an anchor of the ori­gin­al great sky waka (canoe) – Te Waka o Tamar­ēreti. It is our anchor in tur­bu­lent times; our guide towards a bet­ter future.

My per­son­al world view has shif­ted so far that I can­not go back. Once you see you can­not un-see. So, for me, pro­tect­ing our place and its people, and regen­er­at­ing all of our spe­cies so that they are known to future gen­er­a­tions, is no longer an option. It’s a must. 

As a sec­tor, tour­ism has immense poten­tial for good. Col­lect­ively we can be a potent force. This isn’t some­thing we need to learn so much as we need to remem­ber. All we need to know is innate to indi­gen­ous wis­dom. And it exists in nature. We just need to be ready to listen, and to love, more than we want to profit. 

Wherever we are, we can all be ‘place-keep­ers’.

Pur­pose is good.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Fam­ily selfie image sup­plied by Tour­ism Bay of Plenty. “GT” added the heart-shaped overlay.

Downloads

• Te Hā Tāpoi | The Love of Tour­ism 2019 – 2022 (PDF, hos­ted offsite)
• Te Hā Tāpoi | The Love of Tour­ism Annu­al Plan 2020 – 2021 (PDF 6 MB)

About the author

Kristin Dunne is the tumuaki (chief exec­ut­ive) of Tāpoi Te Moananui ā Toi | Tour­ism Bay of Plenty. Ms Dunne is pas­sion­ate about cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able future for the vis­it­or eco­nomy in New Zea­l­and that enhances vis­it­ors’ exper­i­ences and loc­al com­munit­ies. Tour­ism Bay of Plenty’s tour­ism strategy, Te Hā Tapoi, is con­sidered “an exem­plar” frame­work for regen­er­at­ive des­tin­a­tion management. 

Before mak­ing her mark on the travel & tour­ism industry, Kristin held seni­or man­age­ment roles at Voda­fone and Woosh and gained extens­ive mar­ket­ing exper­i­ence at DB Brew­er­ies, ASB BANK, and Tele­vi­sion New Zea­l­and. She is a Fel­low of Mar­ket­ing and holds a Bach­el­or of Busi­ness Studies.