This morning we met with Tourism Industry Aotearoa and learned about how the company works to be more sustainable and make tourism better for tourists and locals alike. What stood out to me were the company’s 12 efforts towards sustainable tourism. The efforts were broken into four sectors: economic, visitor, community, and environment. I thought it was interesting how although they were in different sectors, the efforts were all related to each other. For example, by addressing important aspects of the environment such as cleaning up pollution, visitor satisfaction would increase as tourists would get to enjoy nice, clean environments. Without addressing all 12 aspects, certain goals that are solely focused on will not be achieved. I also learned Tourism Industry Aotearoa acts as a guide for sectors of tourism, rather than a government organization pushing legislation onto companies. After meeting with the group, I hiked up Mount Victoria. The beautiful views at the top of the mountain were the draw, but the informative signs on the way up told a larger story. I learned that the mountain overlooked the port that was first created by Europeans. These settlers than named the mountain after the at the time newly crowed queen.
