Speaking at the Tourism Export Council of New Zealand annual conference in Nelson on Wednesday, Minister of Tourism Stuart Nash was at it again, probably getting more headlines in international papers than he did here in New Zealand with his vision for New Zealand to be one of the top three aspirational destinations for the “world’s most discerning travellers”. 

In other words, New Zealand is going to market itself to what Nash calls “high quality” big spenders – or as Nash said in 2020 - wealthy tourist who “flies business class or premium economy, hires a helicopter, does a tour round Franz Josef and then eats at a high-end restaurant”. 

I don’t have a problem with wealthy people traveling to New Zealand to enjoy our beautiful country. We have amazing luxury accommodation and experiences available, and like all parts of the tourism industry they deserve to thrive. 

I am not sold, however, on this being the answer to rebuilding our international tourism industry; an industry that directly and indirectly contributed to about 9.3 percent of GDP before Covid. 

We all want a more environmentally conscious and sustainable industry that protects our country from the degradation and overcrowding of our wilderness, pressure on infrastructure, and human waste on the roadside. 

But do we need to be exclusive and snobby to get it? 

The idea ‘high quality’ tourists contributed more to New Zealand’s economy than budget backpackers isn’t necessarily backed up by the research. 

Prof James Higham, a professor of tourism at Otago University, told The Guardian “The trend over recent decades globally has been for tourists to travel further, travel faster, produce more CO2, stay shorter and spend less at the destination.”  

The result, he said, was often “very wealthy people destroying the planet in the process of not contributing to destinations as we might have expected or hoped”. 

By comparison, budget travellers tend to stay longer. They may not spend the same daily amount, but their cumulative spending over a longer period of time results in their contribution being meaningful too.  

Youth tourism, as backpackers are categorised as, provides 25 percent of international tourism revenue, which before Covid was about $1 billion a year. 

If we want our tourism industry to recover, we really can’t afford to be fussy right now about who we welcome in. 

But if we want to transform the tourism industry, Stuart Nash needs to pull back from the headline grabbing elitist comments, and focus more on both the short term issues facing the industry - where to find staff and accommodation for them - and the long term issues of how to achieve a sustainable, regenerative, higher-wage industry. 

There’s something else that doesn’t sit well with me when it comes to bashing the two-minute noodle eating backpacker. Like so many Kiwis, keen to take flight into the big wide world, I too travelled the world on a budget, and I ate a lot of noodles. 

For my OE I travelled across land from Hong Kong to Europe via the Trans-Siberian Express. It was a journey filled with extraordinary experiences. It gave me a greater understanding of myself and the world, and led to lifelong friendships that are perhaps my greatest possession today. 

Some of these destinations I have returned too, with a little more money in my pocket, and others I still intend to visit again. And I can’t wait for my children to head overseas and have the same sorts of experiences I had. 

So it seems churlish to discourage overseas visitors the sorts of experiences here that we’ve enjoyed there, in their countries.