Draft Strategic Business Plan - Summary of feedback

Background

The Tourism Data Leadership Group (TDLG) is a sector-led initiative providing advice to the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality on how the $5 million of International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy (IVL) should be allocated to improve the tourism data system.

The TDLG’s Draft Strategic Business Plan (SBP) identifies both the allocation, as well as recommended initiatives.  The SBP was released for public (primarily sector) feedback on Wednesday 17 January 2024.  Feedback closed on Sunday 4 February 2024, although late submissions were also accepted.

19 ‘submissions’ were received from a range of stakeholders in the tourism data system:

• regional tourism organisations (7),
• industry bodies (4),
• government agencies (2),
• academia (1),
• providers (2),
• individuals (3).  

Some submissions were joint, with closer to 30 stakeholders involved overall.

Overall summary

All submissions at a high-level were supportive of the TDLG, and the SBP and roadmap, which was considered to provide a blueprint of near-term actions.

The feedback reflected long-held industry views on the tourism data system. It is evident that building a more robust tourism data system is crucial now more than ever, as is the imperative to strategically manage the risks associated with data continuity.  A key area of feedback was the need for both on-going support for, and funding into, the tourism data system.   

Support for TDLG strategic pou, recommended initiatives and proposed financial allocations

Māuitanga and innovation pou

In addition to support for the adoption of innovation, there was support (of varying degrees) for all four proposed initiatives (nothing negative or significant to respond to):

• understanding Māori research needs (5 submissions)
• work to inform data innovations (4)
• filling priority data gaps (2)
• dedicated Tourism Evidence and Insights page (1).  

Core data sets pou

There was varying support for existing and new measure sets, as well as approaches:

• tourism volumes and flows (12 submissions)
• continuation of core data sets (6)
• short-term rental accommodation (6)
• domestic visitor survey (5)
• regional data (4)
• domestic intentions (4)
• international forecasting (3, 1 negative pertaining to possible approach not the initiative itself)
• dedicated Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre page (2).

Regenerative transformation pou

There were diverse views on the proposed work ranging from it being perceived as “the most valuable transformational aspect of the plan” to it being “less well scoped and will dilute focus and delivery of other priorities.”   The latter has resulted in some changes to the SBP. See the Opportunites to improve the SBP and the TDLG's response secton below.

For all but the Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre (i.e., updating the Sustainable Tourism Explorer, which no submissions commented on) there were good levels of support for:

• holistic tourism data frameworks (9 submissions, 1 negative as identified above)
• community sentiment survey (5).

Leadership and capability pou

The majority of submissions (11) commented on the critical need for on-going funding, while a number also discussed the co-funding concept. There is support for formative discussion (7), however both more information, and transparent processes with active sector participation (as proposed by the TDLG) would be required ahead of any such implementation. Points of consideration were:

• caution / concern over RTOs ability to contribute (6 submissions)
• support for seeking central government funding (4, public merit goods was mentioned)
• suggestions to seek funding outside of the sector (2, i.e., transport, science).

In this pou, there was good support for all other initiatives:

• the Partnership Fund (6 submissions)
• future oversight of tourism data (4)
• improved data use through sector capability building (4).  

On the whole, there was little aversion to the proposed financial allocations.

Opportunities to improve the SBP and the TDLG’s response

A range of comments were made, indicating how the SBP could be improved. In addition to concerns over ongoing funding generally (as identified earlier in the overall summary), there were concerns (of varying degrees) that the SBP was too ambitious and that there were some data gaps mainly at a sub-sector level.

The TDLG took this feedback on board, removing some of the smaller initiatives from the roadmap altogether, enabling extended funding (i.e., a second year’s worth of data collection) into some of the proposed new core datasets.  The outcome of the changes is  that over $4 million of the fund will be invested directly into either data or improved data accessibility.

The TDLG also considered how sub-sector data may be accommodated through the Tourism Data Partnership Fund. Final decisions on this are expected to be announced around July 2024.   

In addition to these changes, the TDLG as a result of the feedback, have provided clarification around the future holistic monitoring framework(s) and a view on core data sets.