Research, consultation, planning, communications

In August 2006 the Hon. Wilkie Rasmussen, the Minister of Tourism for the Cook Islands signed the National Geographic’s Geotourism Charter making the country the first in the Pacific and the fourth in the world to sign.  This marked a major step forward in the reorientation of tourism in the Cook Islands based on a new national strategy prepared by Peter Phillips.  For many years the Cook Islands has been drifting further into the “rest and recreation” style of destination which ultimately is unsustainable.

 

Signing the Charter was part of the strategy’s aim to promote tourism that sustains and enhances the well-being of resident Cook Islanders and their environment, society, economy and culture (a reframing of the National Geographic’s definition of geotourism). As such the strategy built on the intent of former Tourism Minister George Ellis and former Prime Minister Geoffrey Henry who both advocated a triple bottom line approach to tourism development.

The strategy takes the National Geographic’s definition of geotourism as the starting point and adapts it to local circumstances.   Five purposes spell out the goal:

1. 1.ensure that resident Cook Islanders benefit from tourism;
   

2. 2.protect and enhance the Cook Islands environment;
   

3. 3.enhance the tourism industry’s economic viability;
   

4. 4.protect and enhance the tangible and intangible indigenous culture; and
   

5. 5.implement national and island tourism plans in an efficient,  cost-effective, and sustainable manner.
   

The strategy defines a range of actions needed to meet these purposes.  The agenda is large, but so is the task.  These actions are summarised in the main report in a  Logframe for planning and monitoring.  This shows who are the key stakeholders; the indicators used to tell when the action has been achieved; where the information is coming from; and what the action assumes will happen to make it possible.  Making the assumptions clear is important because, in some respects, those underpinning the 1991 Master Plan were not robust.   A lot of the thinking in the Master Plan was based, for instance, on the completion of the Vaimaanga Hotel and strong government regulation of the industry.  Neither of these eventuated.  The overly bureaucratic regulation was replaced in the mid-1990s by an accreditation scheme developed as part of New Zealand’s wide-ranging development assistance for tourism which Peter Phillips managed between 1994 and 1998.

One of the most important assumptions for the geotourism strategy is that public policy and the public sector is engaged, aligned, committed and resourced.  This has not been the case in the past.  A concerted approach involving a wide range of stakeholders will be needed to implement the strategy.

The main report can be downloaded from here.