New Zealand on Track to Become as Crowded as Venice Says Report

According to Upton’s latest report, the tourism sector in New Zealand is set to increase to 10-13 million visitors per year by 2050. The report says that while tourism is often considered a harmless industry, pressures from overcrowding have negatively impacted six main areas:

• Visitor density and loss of natural quiet
• Water quality degradation
• Solid waste generation and management
• Infrastructure development and landscape modification
• Biodiversity loss and biosecurity risk
• Greenhouse gas emissions

More than ever, lines of selfie-taking tourists are appearing on mountaintops, roads are clogged with traffic, and waste is plaguing roadsides and parks. The issues are particularly evident at Mount Cook, Tongariro Alpine Crossing, and Mount Roy.

Professor Michael Lueck, a tourism expert at Auckland University of Technology, said, “It appears that the main problem is the sheer number of tourists, and we need to look at slowing this growth […] it would be fairly easy to, for example, limit the number of cruise ships coming into the country.”

While no policy solution was brought forward in the report, quotas for visitors to the country’s most popular spots could be part of the future of tourism in New Zealand.