Te Tapoitanga Māori: Growing Regional Māori Tourism
Status: Completed
The demand from international tourists for products with both nature-based and cultural elements is growing. Our hypothesis is that the best way to cater for the growth in the numbers of “interactive travellers” visiting New Zealand is to develop eco-cultural products outside the main tourist centres. We need to know what experiences tourists seek, and how they judge quality in eco-cultural tourism, and how Māori can overcome barriers to developing business ventures and clusters (e.g. trails).
This 4-year research programme will produce information that iwi can use to overcome barriers to developing new, high quality, Māori tourism products and businesses. The focus of this research is on international tourists in order to achieve increased foreign exchange earnings. However, domestic tourists are an important all-year-round market for tourism businesses and provide a good base market on which to build a business. Hence they are included in this study. Our research has two components:
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Matching demand and supply: here we explore what cues tourists use to judge a product's quality, how Māori products mix with other tourism products and how this mix affects the overall tourist experience, what level of indigenous culture tourists are comfortable with, and what the optimum size of groups is. To understand this mix, we will interview both customers and non-customers of current tourism businesses. On the supply side, we aim to determine what cues Māori businesses use to judge customer satisfaction and what they are prepared to provide.
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Identifying and testing facilitators of, and barriers to, business development. Specifically, the research will determine how to get the best out of business clusters and regional networks, and determine how to improve the outcomes of iwi interactions with government institutions in the process of business development. It will also explore how iwi structures can facilitate business development.
This research will take place in two case study areas: Bay of Plenty-Te Urewera-Tairawhiti (where there are already a number of Māori tourism ventures) and Horomaka (Banks Peninsula) where local runanga (Wairewa, Rapaki, Ōnuku and Koukourarata) have been discussing possible tourism initiatives. Three Māori research providers (Tuhoe Tourism Federation, Te Urewera-Tairawhiti Tourism Forum, and Takuahi Research and Development Trust) will be directly involved in the research. Our aim is to increase yield by $2 million annually from the two case study regions.
Information flow will be facilitated through new partnerships and enhanced existing ones between Māori organisations, research providers and other agencies involved in tourism such as Tourism New Zealand; the Ministry of Tourism; Māori Regional Tourism Groups, Tourism Industry Association of New Zealand, Community Employment Groups of the Department of Labour; and the Poutama Trust. The main mechanisms we will use are newsletters, websites, hui, workshops, and articles in Māori print media.
Objectives
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Objective 1 – Growing regional Māori tourism business .
Leader - Helen Fitt
Related research
- Collaborative learning
Research in this area identifies factors, tools and processes that support constructive collaboration and social interaction in natural resource management.
Programme Leader:
 | Helen Fitt Email  |
Landcare Research | |
Phone: 03 321 9999 |