The post Govt approves fast-track for major projects appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Air NZ, Singapore Airlines to add more seasonal services appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post …and the airline lodges a complaint with ComCom over Auckland Airport charges appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Airport CEO leads Cook Strait ferry advisory group appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Govt scraps Auckland fuel tax appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Govt pushes RMA changes to promote growth appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Minimum wage increase slated for April appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Airports appeal to High Court over ComCom decisions appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Govt ending Productivity Commission appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post “Timing completely wrong” for EV road charges – EV tour operator appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Regulation biggest challenge for Kiwi homesharers – Booking.com appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

An Auckland court has found Whakaari Management Limited (WML) guilty of breaching workplace safety laws relating to the Whakaari White Island eruption in 2019. This decision could have implications for anyone involved in adventure tourism in New Zealand.

When Whakaari erupted on December 9 2019 there were 47 people on the island. The eruption killed 22 of them and injured 25, some severely. The island was at alert level VAL 2 (moderate to heightened volcanic unrest) when it erupted.

As owner of the island, WML was charged with failing to adequately minimise the risks to tourists.

The court’s guilty verdict will likely result in significant changes to the $26.5bn tourism industry. So how did we get here and what is likely to change?

New Zealand’s most active volcano

The Buttle family has owned Whakaari since 1936. Brothers Peter, James and Andrew Buttle inherited the island in 2012 and own it through a family trust. The trust leased Whakaari to WML (with the Buttles as the company’s directors).

WML had licensing agreements with tour companies to run commercial walking tours.

Of the 47 people on the island when it erupted, 38 were part of a tour organised through the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Ovation of the Seas. Questions quickly arose about how aware tourists were of the risks and who might be held responsible.

WorkSafe New Zealand originally charged 13 parties under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Six eventually pleaded guilty to the charges and six, including the three Buttle brothers, had their cases dismissed.

The case against WML

WML was charged with breaching two sections of the act. The company was found guilty of one charge while the other was dismissed.

A key question in the court case was what responsibility WML bore when it licensed others to run the tour operations on the island.

WML argued it was only a landowner and not responsible for tourists’ safety. The company also claimed it had no physical presence on Whakaari or involvement in day-to-day tourism operations.

However, Judge Evangelos Thomas did not accept WML’s “passive owner” argument. The judge pointed to several factors as evidence, including:

• its business was to generate income through the enabling of commercial walking tours on Whakaari
• it entered into the licence agreements and had termination rights for breaches
• it maintained a direct and continuing relationship with tour operators
• it engaged with tour operators and other relevant entities, including Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS), civil defence and various agencies interested and involved in increasing tourist numbers to Whakaari
• it had occasional direct engagement with WorkSafe and GNS.

The judge also noted an earlier eruption in 2016 should have had all Whakaari stakeholders on notice for sound risk assessment. This eruption occurred when Whakaari was at VAL 1 (minor volcanic unrest). Fortunately, it occurred at night when there were no visitors on the island.

Judge Thomas argued this showed the volcano “could erupt at any time and without warning, with the risk of death or serious injury to tourists or tour guides who may be there at that time”.

WML should have engaged experts in volcanology and health and safety to advise on risks presented by tours to Whakaari, the judge found.

Sentencing will happen in February with a maximum possible penalty of a $1.5m fine.

Adventure tourism rules have already changed

This tragedy has already impacted the adventure tourism sector of New Zealand.

In August, the workplace relations and safety minister announced government changes to the rules for adventure tourism operations.

Minister Carmel Sepuloni said: “Adventure activity operators will now be required by law to communicate serious risks to customers, meaning prospective participants can be fully informed of risks before buying a ticket, in the time before the activity begins and throughout the activity, including if the risks change.”

WorkSafe was also given expanded powers to suspend, cancel or refuse registrations for adventure operators who cannot provide activities safely.

It is clear more rigorous risk assessments are required in New Zealand’s tourism industry. Responsibility for safety will no longer fall on tour operators alone.

All facets of the tourism supply chain, from land owners to tour operators to transport providers, will need to fulfil certain responsibilities to ensure the safety of their customers and workers. This will include careful consideration of the definition of “serious risk” and the many possible sources of risk.

Agencies such as the Meteorological Service and GNS will need to update adventure tour operators on a day-to-day basis. Natural hazards and risks such as extreme weather events, as well as volcanic and seismic risks, will need to be understood, factored into the planning of tour operations, and clearly communicated.

Reducing the risk in adventure tourism

Risk is an exciting attraction of adventure experiences for tourists in New Zealand. But public perception of risk is not the same as actual risk.

Some adventure tourism businesses offer experiences, such as bungy jumping, based on high perceived risk. But in reality these are low risk due to long-standing safety protocols.

Others, such as tours to geologically active locations, offer low perceived risk but there is the potential for periodic and unpredictable high actual risk.

Operators providing such experiences will now be obligated to shoulder greater responsibilities in ensuring such risks do not cause real harm.

All aspects of risk associated with the full spectrum of tourism businesses and tour operations, including but not limited to adventure tourism activities, will now need to be considered more carefully in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Freya Higgins-Desbiolles is adjunct senior lecturer in tourism management and adjunct associate professor at the University of South Australia and James Higham is professor of tourism at Griffith University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.

The post Perspectives: Whakaari case alters accepted risk in tourism appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Online gambling regulation needed to tackle fake sites – SkyCity appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Election 2023: What the parties have promised for tourism appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post QLDC seeks feedback on waterway bylaw appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Six new marine reserves for South Island appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post TECNZ election manifesto: Milford Sound access, DOC concessions, visas appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The travel and tourism sector entered 2023 like a marathon runner hitting the last six miles of a race. It fought its way through almost two years of the Covid-19 pandemic — only to be overwhelmed, as the disease waned, by an unprecedented surge in travel by people tired of quarantines and lockdowns.

With many in the sector still struggling to fill their workforces to handle this significant uptake of travel, big and small companies alike now face their next challenge — the accelerating transition from voluntary to mandatory sustainability reporting. Are they ready for it?

In 2024, the first wave of tougher mandatory regulation on sustainability disclosure takes effect as new European Union sustainability rules start to compel the largest companies operating in the bloc to begin gathering data on greenhouse gas emissions.

These new rules — including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive — also require companies to submit annual transition plans for reducing emissions. Plans must be compliant with limiting the rise in Earth’s temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius — a target set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement — with the progress on meeting those goals available to corporate stakeholders and the public annually.

But the last couple of years have been busy when it came to sustainability. Not only did the EU impose new mandatory regulations, so did the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, and Singapore.

The Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States is also expected to move in the next few months to adopt similar Climate Disclosure Requirements that would make formerly voluntary emissions disclosures mandatory for US publicly registered companies.

Most recently, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) — affiliated with the influential International Accounting Standards Board — released what will eventually become the international norm for sustainability accounting. All the new standards require disclosure of Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol for corporate accounting.

New report and survey

Given the deluge of new mandatory standards, it’s time for travel and tourism to assess how prepared the sector is. After surveying sector members for a report expected to be released in the fourth quarter, the WTTC and Oliver Wyman have concluded there is still considerable work to be done before the sector will be up to the task.

According to WTTC’s groundbreaking research, travel and tourism is currently responsible for 8.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. While many of the sector’s biggest companies have set 2050 emission-reduction targets, just as many have just started to consider how to address climate change in their business. Thus, there is a wide range of understanding and readiness in travel and tourism when it comes to the upcoming reporting requirements.

Navigating the compliance landscape will be no easy task — especially for a sector with operations spanning multiple countries and enterprises that run from a few employees to thousands. Even in a single jurisdiction, the complexities of managing multiple subsidiaries, suppliers, and partnerships will be daunting.

These hurdles become even higher, considering that 80% of sector members are small and midsize companies with limited resources to invest in new personnel and technology. Recognising this, WTTC and Oliver Wyman will be including in the upcoming report a tool to help the sector navigate the requirements.

Company trepidations

One concern raised by most participants in our survey was the sector’s lack of resources, capabilities, and expertise to tackle the demands of the new regulations. In the past at many travel and tourism companies, sustainability personnel were more likely to deal with branding and marketing or operational issues than with accounting or data collection.

But compliance with these kinds of rigorous sustainability disclosures rises above a mere accounting exercise to become more of an organisation-wide shift in culture, and sustainability teams will not be able to tackle the upcoming challenge alone. More education and internal expertise on sustainability will be needed across organisations.

Another challenge facing the sector is data collection. The broad and fragmented value chains of many companies in the sector, make it not only difficult to ensure that data is assembled in a timely manner, but also that the information on emissions — especially Scope 3 emissions, which are produced by a company’s upstream suppliers and downstream users — is in fact accurate. With the absence of sector-specific guidance, some form of sector collaboration may be needed for the first few years.

Generally, companies are struggling to reconcile the investment needed in new data collection capabilities with investment already being made in initiatives to reduce emissions and meet other environmental, social, and governance goals.

Of course, at the same time, additional spending on new personnel and operations has been required across most organisations to meet the rising demand.

But ready or not, the regulations have arrived, and especially for the biggest companies and networks, the time to act is now.

The good news for the sector is the potential benefit travel and tourism enjoys from any efforts to preserve nature and the planet’s hospitable climate. Few sectors will be challenged more by the rise in severe weather and environmental crises as well as the disappearance of Earth’s biodiversity, which should provide adequate incentive for companies to go beyond mere compliance.

Christopher Imbsen is director of sustainability at WTTC, and Dan Darcy is principal of transportation and services practice at Oliver Wyman.

The post Perspectives: Is tourism ready for mandatory emissions reporting? appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Special legal protection for freshwater springs appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post New freedom camping rules causing concern – RVA appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Revamped Wildlife Act to provide stronger biodiversity protection appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Election 2023: ‘More detail please’ – tourism leaders on politicians’ promises appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Airports Association releases aviation manifesto appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post New adventure regime prompts survey into tourism disclosure needs appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post QLDC enacts bylaw on commercial pub crawls appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Hauraki Gulf protection bill passes first reading appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post BYATA Conference: Adventure tourism must prep for new era managing risk – TIA’s Ingram appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Govt shores up jet fuel supply resilience appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Tourism to benefit from new Hauraki Gulf plan – WWF appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post New rules for adventure operators in wake of Whakaari disaster appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Gender pay gap reporting on cards for large businesses appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Hauraki Gulf protection plan welcomed appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Govt triples Hauraki Gulf protection area appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Cellar door sales bill introduced in Parliament appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Greens seek better protection for dolphins appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Hospitality NZ welcomes longer trading hours for special events appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Nats propose hunting & fishing minister, new DOC huts partnership appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Hospo can open longer for Rugby World Cup appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Bill to help reduce payment wait for small businesses passes appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Airbnb moots visitor levy, code of conduct for NZ accom appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Booze bill could be “major blow” for wine tourism – NZ Winegrowers appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Updated freedom camping rules come into law appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post CAA, industry launch emerging aviation tech forum appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Freedom camping changes good for the environment – govt appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post SkyCity urges online casino regulation after govt moves on digital sports betting appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post TAIC calls for harnessing of commercial balloon pilots after ejections appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post New offences created under proposed Customs law appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Govt extending trading for hospo during Rugby World Cup appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post CAA working on helicopter night flying rules following crash appeared first on Tourism Ticker.

The post Last day for feedback on changes to adventure rules appeared first on Tourism Ticker.