Positive
- Economic improvements
Due to the country’s weaker economy, New Zealand is eager to seek other means to boost the country. New Zealand initially depended quite heavily on its agriculture and products, such as wool, to trade for income. However, income earned from trading has dropped as buying countries could find cheaper alternatives in developing countries. The isolated location also cause a disadvantage in this aspect as it makes trading with New Zealand more expensive as well. As a result, New Zealand does realise that it can no longer depend on trading alone for income. This causes it to start expanding its tourism sector, to use tourists as a new source of income. In a way, tourism may help New Zealand to break out of its recession cycle as New Zealand is still one of the most attractive destinations to go for its natural landscape. Especially now that nature-based tourism is improving, New Zealand will stand a better chance in pulling in these tourists.
- Improved accessibility & infrastructure
Public transportation in New Zealand is rather unpopular and low usage, compared to many other countries. Over the past few years, the local government did put in more effort in improving the public transportation systems to make the country more convenient and accessible for the tourists. New Zealand also allowed more flights to enter the country to boost the tourist’s inflow. In addition, airports are also improved greatly to allow higher satisfaction from the people, the Auckland Airport is also ranked 9th in 2009 by Skytrax (ranked 10th in 2008) for the world’s best airport.
Auckland Airport
Negative
- Environmental impacts
Due to its isolated location, most of the tourists have to fly long distances to reach New Zealand. With the increase number of tourist arrivals, the higher frequency of planes flying above the islands will result in rise in carbon emissions in the country. This will pose serious threat to both the environment and the tourism sector. Why would it affect the tourism sector? If the government were to restrict the number of tourists arrivals (by limiting number of planes flying in), they would be able to keep the carbon emission in control. However, this will affect the country’s source of income as fewer tourist receipts are earned.
- Environmental impacts
New Zealand is also a multi-rational country, where its people come from many different parts of the world, such as Europeans, Chinese, Japanese and Americans. Each one of bring would bring in some form of their own local culture with them as they immigrate to New Zealand. As such, each of their lifestyles is slightly differs from household to household. New Zealanders are also known to be very good neighbours, and most of these new “kiwis” are not hesitant to share their own culture. As the country opens out to more foreign immigrations, a variety of cultures could be found within New Zealand. This will make the local culture more diluted due to the influences of other cultures. Eventually, this “hybrid” of different cultures will make it more difficult to differentiate New Zealand from other countries. Tourists from other countries would also leads to more influence of other cultures, such as opening of more western themed eateries and attractions. However, this issue does not pose too much of a serious threat currently as New Zealand still have a very distinct culture of the “kiwis” that the locals are very proud of.
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