As one who over the years has dabbled in high yield tourism, your front page headline “i-Site bombshell” got my attention. At last sanity was going to prevail and the i-Site was going to be given back to those tourism operators that are not only in the tourism business, but their past track record shows they actually know about promotion and marketing etc.
Alas, here we go again, Words like, “An exciting opportunity for the tourism sector”. Not spoken by a recognised mover and shaker in the tourism business, but by a representative of a trust, whose track record in bringing in extra tourists to this region, past and present, can only be described as dismal.
. . . Same people promoted and paid thousands of ratepayers’ funds in an absurd deal with AirNZ to bring 5000 extra tourists a year into Gisborne? Yeah right.
The only marketing deals I am aware of that actually very successfully achieved this continuing target with their own marketing project were Rhythm & Vines and bringing in cruise ships. Neither had anything to do with a trust.
Give the ratepayers a break and return the i-Site to where it belongs — with the tourism operators.
Frank Murphy
