Tourism Ticker

Tourism Ticker is a new daily digital news and insight service for New Zealand's tourism sector. The Ticker's website will cover the issues, products, businesses and people operating in the industry. Created by two financial journalists recently returned from the UK, Bridget O'Connell and Paul Yandall, the Ticker is produced from Wanaka but has a national coverage. Contact info@tourismticker.com ph 0204 101 9179.

Are You Ready?

All of New Zealand is at risk of earthquakes and all of our coastline is at risk of tsunami. We can’t predict when one will happen, but we can protect ourselves, our whānau, and our manuhiri.

Ensure your visitors and staff know the correct, life-saving action to take during an earthquake or tsunami with the help of new resources developed by the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management.
 
The resources, including posters and factsheets in 22 languages, are on the Civil Defence website.

Conference venues invited to showcase to thousands

A new tool developed for the Tourism New Zealand Business Events website is promoting the diverse range of world class conference venues available across the country to thousands of international business event organisers.

Venues are invited to create a listing on www.businessevents.newzealand.com that will include information, images and video content and link to a venue’s website.

The Tourism New Zealand business events website received a record number of visits last year and this is expected to grow. With nearly 300,000 views a year it’s an extremely valuable place for venues to be seen. Read more here.

Business Calendar

Use this tool to quickly find opportunities, training, compliance dates and related tasks from across government. You can search by region, date, and category.

Training and development

Staff training and development is fundamental to business growth. It can help sales, save staff hours, create more efficient production methods, improve technical systems and more.

Learn about some of the options available for your staff to develop skills, as well as grow or improve your business.

Enhanced Access Fund

The New Zealand Walking Access Commission administers a contestable fund to support projects aimed at enhancing access to New Zealand's great outdoors. This fund is known as the Enhanced Access Fund.

The application process for 2016-2017 funding is now open. There are two funding rounds this financial year, with a total of $56,000 available across the two rounds. Funding will be prioritised towards projects that help to secure certain and enduring access to the outdoors for future generations.

The main priority for funding is:

• obtaining certain and enduring access; for example, the cost of negotiation to secure access agreements, legal or survey costs of obtaining access, the cost of obtaining Resource Management Act consents.

Other priorities, in descending order, are:

• information including signs;
• developing and improving walking opportunities through installing gates, stiles and fences and the cost of obtaining professional reports such as engineering reports; and
• supporting community walking access projects, including infrastructure and administration. Funding of infrastructure including bridges and boardwalks is low priority.

Find out more and apply by 31 March here.

Tourism Infrastructure Fund

 Late last year the Government received a proposal from senior tourism industry leaders for a Tourism Infrastructure Fund that would support investments in local and mixed use infrastructure. To support the case for a Fund, TIA is assembling a list of projects that could potentially be funded, to demonstrate both need and scale.

TIA would like to hear if you are aware of infrastructure investments that could enhance tourism in your region.

Local and mixed use infrastructure could include car parks, water services, toilets, footpaths, access ways and urban public spaces, public information, roads, public transport, cycleways, conference facilities, cruise facilities, freedom camping facilities, recreation and sport facilities, facilities on public conservation lands and airport facilities.

Within central government, the process for determining what makes the cut for the May Budget is advancing quickly. To support the case for a Tourism Infrastructure Fund, TIA is looking to have its potential projects list completed by 20 February. It’s important to note that this is not a formal process for soliciting actual funding bids. The request is purely to inform the decision as to whether a fund should be created. If you have something to contribute, please contact bruce.bassett@tia.org.nz