Tēnā koutou katoa. Good morning, and welcome to Tourism Summit Aotearoa.

It's a real pleasure to be here in Ōtautahi Christchurch. This city has rebuilt itself with intent. A new central city. Te Pae. A beautiful new stadium. The Avon at the heart of things. 

And visitors have noticed. Booking.com has just named Christchurch one of its ten trending destinations for 2027, the only New Zealand city on the list.

If you want to see what a place looks like when it's designed rather than left to chance, you're standing in it. So this feels like the right place to talk about this year's theme: Tourism Inc, Distinctive by Design.

From NZ Inc to Tourism Inc

Let me tell you why we chose it.

Over twenty years ago, in my very first job I worked at the PR agency that launched a programme called Better by Design. Some of you may remember it. It came out of a government taskforce of designers, academics and business people, and it was run through New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

The idea was that New Zealand had to stop competing on price at the bottom of the market. So, it helped exporters use design as strategy, not decoration. Think hard about what makes you different, and build the business around it. Fisher & Paykel's DishDrawer and Icebreaker were the kind of examples it held up.

The launch was huge. The room was full of our most exciting companies. And I walked away with a real appetite to be part of growing New Zealand Inc.

That was NZ Inc at work. Government, exporters and designers pulling in the same direction to sell New Zealand to the world. What I learnt then, I still believe now:
New Zealand can only win if we make concerted choices. Scale is never handed to us.
But tourism wasn't part of that conversation, even though it earned nearly one in every five export dollars at the time.

Tourism Inc is different from NZ Inc in one important way.

A DishDrawer is designed by one company. A visitor's New Zealand is designed by hundreds. The airline that flies them here. The council that builds the walkways. The operator who takes them out on the water. The café, the hotel, the guide. The iwi whose stories give a place its meaning. And the New Zealanders who welcome them.

No single business owns the product. We make it together.

That's what Tourism Inc means. And it's why design matters so much for us.

So that's why we landed on Distinctive by Design.

Tourism is back, and the year ahead looks strong.

Good years are exactly when it's easiest to drift. I'd rather we used this moment to push further ahead.

What is tourism by design, and how do we know?

So what is tourism by design?

It's where the outcomes are chosen, not left to happen. Who comes, when they come, where they go, what they experience, and what the place and its people get back. Each one is a decision.

The opposite is tourism by default. Growth lands wherever demand happens to fall. Peaks and pressure arrive together. The place adapts to the visitor instead of the other way round.

And good design is mostly invisible. Visitors don't see the decisions behind an experience. They feel them. That's something technology can't copy, even in the age of AI.
People don't travel to gather information. They travel for a feeling.

So how do we know if we're doing it? There are three questions I keep coming back to.
1.    Could someone get this anywhere else? If a visitor could have the same experience somewhere else, it isn't distinctive.
2.    Did we choose it, and what did we say no to? Real choices involve trade-offs. If we can't name something we said no to, we probably haven't designed anything.
3.    And would we know if it was working? Arrivals and revenue only tell part of the story. Design also means knowing about seasonality, where spend lands, our people, the environment, and whether locals still welcome us.

Today, by design

Those questions shaped today's programme. We didn't put this day together by chance. We designed it as Tourism Inc in one room, with each speaker holding a different part of the picture.

This morning starts with the markets we compete in.

George Cao on how our third-largest market is changing, and then a panel on the global shifts reshaping trade, growth and confidence.

Then we turn to what makes us different.

Tabitha Harris on what makes a place distinctive. Jonas on how leaders measure what matters, which is our third question in practice. And Peri Drysdale on designing sustainability that actually works.

This afternoon goes into the detail of how we build it.

AI and what it means for how visitors find us. Our workplaces, and the people who deliver the experience. Kylie on community-led tourism, designed from the inside out. Paula on tourism designed for everyone. Then David on building a business that benefits from change, and finally Craig Hudson to close the day.

Different voices, one design. That's Tourism Inc.

Tourism 2050: a blueprint, on purpose

But if thousands of us are designing one product, we need a plan we can all build to.

For this industry, that plan is Tourism 2050. And we call it a blueprint on purpose.

A blueprint isn't a wish list. It's the drawing that the architects, engineers and trades all work from, so that what gets built fits together. It shows where the foundations go, what carries the weight, and what comes first. And it only works if everyone builds to the same one.

We refreshed that blueprint this year, launching it at Te Puia in August. Many of you helped shape it, and I want to thank you for that. A refresh is a set of choices, so let me tell you what we chose.

We chose to keep our foundation. Kaitiakitanga, manaakitanga, whanaungatanga the values running through every part of it. We didn't start again, because those still held, and they're the reason the plan is uniquely New Zealands.

We chose to treat our natural environment as the foundation of tourism, not a cost to it.
Our conservation estate is a large part of why people come here. That's why we pushed for conservation law reform, and why we'll keep standing up for the places visitors come to see.

We chose to further elevate climate inside the plan with Climate Resilience and Adaptation now an action alongside carbon reduction – because a washed-out road or a closed track is a closed business.

We chose to compete.

New Zealand is a long way from almost everywhere, and demand doesn't appear by default. So Global Competitiveness and Connectivity now leads the plan. And on AI, the blueprint is plain: our visibility cannot be assumed. It must be actively designed for.

We chose to be honest about funding.

How tourism is paid for, and how councils can invest in the infrastructure that visitors and communities share.

And we chose to grow our own people.

From 2029, tourism will be an industry-led subject for Year 12 and 13 students, so young New Zealanders can see it as a career worth pursuing.

The blueprint is already shaping the system around us.

The New Zealand Tourism Policy Statement launched in August sets the government's direction for tourism. Tourism 2050 sets the industry's. They point the same way.

Saturday: where the design meets the ask

Which brings me to Saturday.

This is where tourism by design and this election meet. Design is about choices that last. And tourism is built over decades, not terms. A new bridge takes years. A conservation partnership is measured in generations. A student who takes tourism in Year 12 in 2029 could be running a business by 2050.

None of that fits inside three years.

For a long time, tourism was missing at election time. Missing from party policies. Missing from commitments.

This year has been different – and I am proud of the role our advocacy has played in putting tourism squarely in the conversation: the kind of tourism we want, how it's funded, the role councils play, what major events bring.

But attention is the start, not the finish.

TIA works with every party, in government and in opposition, and we'll keep doing that whatever the result. So my ask of whoever forms the next government is simple.

Don't redraw the plan. Build to it.

Tourism 2050 isn't a wish list. It's a blueprint, built by the industry, tested with tourism businesses and refreshed this year. The design work is done. What it needs now is a government that builds to it, and stays the course.

Close: what are you choosing?

I want to finish where we are right now.

There's real optimism in this industry, and we should be proud of it. You can feel the hum of tourism around New Zealand and it’s making a difference.

On Saturday the country makes its choices. But the choices that shape tourism most are made every day, in businesses like yours. Who you hire. What's on the menu. Whether a visitor hears te reo.

So the question I'd like you to carry into today is this: what are you choosing?

It takes us back to where I started. As a country, we have to compete hard. Our thinking is our power. And we're strongest when we work together. That's Tourism Inc.

Distinctive doesn't happen to us. We design it.

Thank you.