The Role of the Local Government in New Zealand Tourism: A Historical Perspective

There is a lack of historical record, both by academia and industry, and a lack of corporate memory of central and local government tourism policies in New Zealand. The New Zealand Tourism Strategy 2010 identified policy gaps such as tourism planning, destination management and the support of regional tourism organisations and that local government has a significant role to play in tourism. This paper is a historical and descriptive analysis of policy process documenting how local government tourism policy and its associated processes came into being. Both primary and secondary data sources have been used such as interviews and administrative and archived documents. The findings highlight that the problems associated with tourism at the local level have remained the same. Due to the lack of historical policy knowledge there is a tendency to reinvent the wheel and an inability to measure if progress is being made.