Welcome to Christchurch, welcome to the south

Tourism leaders want the Christchurch CBD to focus on what it can add to the region's status as the gateway to the South Island, in order to bring more tourists to the central city.

Last week, ChristchurchNZ business development manager Caroline Blanchfield said few visitors were coming into the Christchurch CBD, which needed to offer a "better" visitor experience than it did now.

Christchurch Airport chief executive Malcolm Johns said Christchurch needed to "embrace" it's gateway status, and then maximise the amount of time people spent in the gateway.

"Because people who are coming to New Zealand for 10 days on holiday, are not going to spend all 10 days in your city."

He said Christchurch needed to focus on what the CBD could add to being the region's gateway, which it was not doing at the moment.

All the "hardware" needed for the city to present itself as such was going to be ready in the next three years, he said.

Johns said the airport's numbers had been really positive for the last couple of years since it "really embraced" the gateway role it played. 

 

JOHN BISSET/STUFF

Christchurch Airport CEO Malcolm Johns says Christchurch needs to focus on what the CBD can add to being the region's gateway, which it is not doing at the moment.

 

There were two key things Johns believed the city needed to do: create a post-earthquake Christchurch story and differentiate from other New Zealand cities.

"The really key opportunity for ChristchurchNZ is to form up that post-earthquake story."

He said visitors looked at the city through the lens of where they lived, so local business people and residents had to step outside of Christchurch and ask what made it unique within New Zealand.

For Johns, it was the hunded-year history with Antarctica and the 2011 earthquake, which was something visitors were interested in understanding from both a scientific and personal perspective.

 

JOSEPH JOHNSON/STUFF

Tourism leaders say that by the summer, completion of more works will make the Christchurch CBD more attractive to tourists.

 

To boost the number of people staying in the city, there needed to be a focus on events, leisure, and conventions, he said.

Events would both boost visitor numbers during quieter periods and reconnect communities with the central city, he said.

Numbers from Statistics New Zealand's latest Accommodation Survey showed May's visitor numbers were up across Canterbury, which picked up 25,000 additional guest nights compared to the previous year – the greatest increase of any region in the country.

But Christchurch contributed just 4756 of that increase, while the city's monthly accommodation capacity in the city went up by 12,462. This meant occupancy rates for this May were 45 per cent, down from 50 per cent in May 2013. The average length of stay in Christchurch also decreased slightly since May last year.

Last week, Hospitality New Zealand Canterbury president Peter Morrison said the winter had been one of the worst for hoteliers and moteliers since the 2011 earthquakes.

On Thursday, Morrison said the increased guest night numbers in the Accommodation Survey results came as a surprise to him, as Christchurch hoteliers and moteliers had complained about a quiet May at the Hospitality NZ AGM.

Since then, the opening of the 204-room Crowne Plaza has added to the accommodation over supply. More large central city hotels are in the pipeline – the latest, announced on Wednesday, is a 150-room, six-star complex at the Harley Chambers site on Cambridge Tce.

Morrison said said the increased competition was going to be hard, especially over the winter months. Not having a convention centre made a big difference.

 

 

"It's always been traditionally quiet in the winter, but when we had a convention centre we had 25 per cent of the convention market."

He said Christchurch needed some big events over winter to bring in more people, and to make sure people were aware of the attractions in the city.

"The positive thing, is that we've now got ChristchurchNZ, which has been specifically set up to bring people back to Christchurch."

ChristchurchNZ chief executive Tom Hooper said the city was moving along a programme of development.

"Each day and each month, there's more amenity, and there will be a tipping point where the CBD does become an attraction in its own right."

He said by the coming summer the city would be most of the way there, and he could envision visitors sitting at a new cafe next to the river.

Hooper said the city needed to tell the story of the city more openly and coherently than had been done in the past. Locals needed to be part of the experience.

"Perhaps the most important audience to get, to understand that, is the local residents."

 - Stuff