Major industry players claim Queenstown’s hotel industry has largely fallen on tough times – and only a conference centre will save it.
Queenstown’s suffering from a Christchurch earthquake-induced tourism downtown, tour business lost last summer due to the Rugby World Cup and a drop in longer-stay long-haul visitors caused by the global financial crisis, the industry players say.
They also claim the problem’s heightened by an over-supply of upmarket rooms, especially after the global Hilton chain added 280 rooms across two new hotels a year ago.
Some hotels are massively discounting rooms – an approach slammed by other hoteliers.
Millennium and Copthorne Hotels’ New Zealand boss B.K. Chiu told his annual meeting last month: “There’s enough rooms in Queenstown to last the next 25 years assuming you have three per cent growth.”
Tourism consultant Stephen Hamilton told the recent NZ Hotel Industry Conference that jewel in the crown Queenstown is looking tarnished and the crown somewhat dented.
“This is such a different situation to what so many people would have anticipated – especially the property developers and white-shoed salesmen,” Inside Tourism reported him saying.
Hamilton, a director of tourism consultancy Horwath HTL, said occupancies in Queenstown’s 4.5 and five-star hotels fell to just above 50 per cent last year.
“The financial pressure will be on Queenstown hotels for several years to come.
“A new conference centre could make a major difference.”
Queenstown is also reliant on a recovery in Christchurch, Hamilton said.
Local Tourism Industry Association NZ hotels chair Penny Clark says: “It’s a very serious situation out there.”
“Who’d have thought that with the meltdown we got back in 2008, we’d still be sitting here and now facing, possibly, another 10 years of it being a bit tough.”
Clark – a member of the local conference centre working party – says adding this amenity is absolutely critical.
“This town basically has all its eggs in one basket and it’s called the ‘leisure market’.
“We need to be major players in the conference market because we just can’t have this boom and bust mentality we’ve currently got.”
Hotels discounting isn’t smart business, she says.
Graham Wilkinson, who owns Queenstown’s upmarket St Moritz and Sofitel, says the local hotel sector is probably as competitive as it’s ever been.
Hotels that discount damage themselves in the longer term, he says.
Your say
Who is Fooling Who?
What is the Exclusive Scoop? surely not that the local tourism Industry have there begging bowls out again and that the Mountain Scene is acting as their principle social worker advocate.
The current situation has quite simply arisen because of the lack of foresight and will by the Queenstown Hotel Industry to diversify and meet perceived conference market demand when they were riding quite comfortably on the back of high volume Group and FIT leisure business and the lowest cost hospitality' wage regime in New Zealand.
It now appears that through the proxy of our local mayor , council and vested business interests operating under the guise of an working party that the ratepayers are being dragged into an untenable situation of having to pick up the tab for the scoping report which undoubtedly will suggest ratepayers give up local body land and underwrite the building and operating costs for a Conference centre for which when the chickens come home to roost the ratepayers will be left holding the baby for.
Having regard to the adverse audit report , GFC and the constrained ability of our small ratepayer base to be further exploited to meet facilities that do not even full with in the local bodies Act, it shows the disregard and how out of touch some people are to be even considering this facility. We simply have to look at Dunedin to see the adverse long term impact there new stadium and conference centre has had on both local and regional ratepayers including those located in Queenstown with out any appreciable trickle down benefits.
I would suggest that it is a given that the Conference working party is going to recommend a blow the expense state of the art Conference Centre which the Council will no doubt be happy tor underwrite .That the Council make same amount of funds that they recently available to formulate their proposals to allow for an independent report that provides for an balanced cost benefit analysis.That they then put all the facts available both pro and con and put it to a ratepayer referendum.
18 Jun 2012 01:58PMpcleisure
Of course we need a confrence centre
As a frequent visitor to qtn I can't believe you don't have a conference centre , it is an absolute sitter, can you imagine the conferences you would get from Oz, you need to spread the risk, and business confrences are big spenders not on a budget
16 Jun 2012 10:01AMg
If it would make money the hotel chains would build it themselves
If the Hoteliers can see the value in a conference centre then they will pay for it themselves.
We can conclude that since they have not done so yet, and are busy petitioning the council to build one for them that it will not turn a profit.
15 Jun 2012 09:19AMJack
Have your say
You will need to register or login before you can post a comment.
