We are now underway with a groundbreaking tourism project to understand optimal visitation in the Queenstown Lakes region of New Zealand, specifically focussed on Queenstown, Wānaka and surrounding areas.
Our team of researchers is led by Professor Susanne Becken (Griffith) and also includes Professor Oz Sahin, Shane Vuletich (FreshInfo) and Darren Rewi (Take Tuia). We were awarded this project earlier in the year by the Destination Southern Lakes (DSL) Board, which is responsible for governance of the region’s destination management plan.
Our project aims to create an optimal visitation model that will enable effective scenario planning and informed tourism management decision-making within the district.
While tourism optimisation studies have been conducted elsewhere in the world, the project that we aim to deliver will be ground-breaking. Tourism is critical to the Queenstown Lakes economy and contributes significantly to regional GDP as well as recreational infrastructure, experiences and diversity, but high growth tourism also comes with enormous management and sustainability challenges.
Our project aims to ensure tourism is planned for in the future in a resilient and robust manner, to ensure a thriving and resilient community, environment and industry. It is great to work with a dedicated and visionary council, and we are excited by the challenge of advancing a research project is truly path leading.
