Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Todd Barberel: WellingtonNZ General Manager Destination and Marketing on a drop in cruise visits

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Todd Barberel: WellingtonNZ General Manager Destination and Marketing on a drop in cruise visits · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We've got a three percent drop in port calls from
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: cruise ships this season, forty one less for the North
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: but in extra twenty three for the South. We lost
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty last year on the year before,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Wellington down twenty four percent. Todd Barbarall, General Manager Wellington
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and Z with us this morning.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Hey Todd, good morning Ryan. How are you very well?
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Thank you?
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: How bad is it in Wellington right now?
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: From your perspective, Look, I think there's a lot of
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: negativity that's coming around in media about cuts and the like,
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: but I also look at some glimmers of hope when
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: I think of Wellington at the moment over the last
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: international visitor season to March, you know, we've had an
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: increase in visitors, but have an increase in spend we've
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: had domestically.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: From a city perspective, darning of Tata and Tenaco Square,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: it just feels like there's actually some positive momentum coming.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: So when we face these challenges of cruise lines, which
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: they make decisions a couple of years out, it's one
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: that we just need to balance against some of our
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: long term objectives.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: When you say that you're a visit at international as
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the numbers are up. Are you back up over pre
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: COVID yet? For Wellington?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Not quite, But what we do to know is that
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the spend that we're having is increasing. So for Wellington,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: for instance, we are getting more spent out of out
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: international visitors, particularly the Americans, the Chinese. We can longest
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: stay from a UK and European. So while we haven't
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: quite got the visit of numbers back, the spend is
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: definitely approaching to the previous numbers we had before COVID.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Are you getting everyone's getting slammed with Aussies? Are you
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: getting the Aussi's and Wellington?
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Well, we love Australians, to be fair. We know that
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: we're a great destination for a long extended break over weekends.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: But now with some of the boost funding the governments provided,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: we've been able to focus on getting people on things
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: like the class in New Zealand Wine Trail which heads
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: up to Hawk's Bay, the wier Rappa and to Marlborough
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: and destinations like that, or touring roots like that is
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: quite an attractive proposition. So the more Australians that can come,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: we welcome them.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: What does the twenty four percent down on the cruise
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: ship Port calls. What does that actually mean? Do you
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: know how much less that will mean for the economy?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Not precisely, because I mean we've averaged about seventy million
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: dollars from cruise over the past number of years. And
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: just because it's reduction in vessels isn't necessarily a step
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: down and the spend as such. And the reason I
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: say that, Ryan, is that sometimes what you see with
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: cruise isn't necessary proportional to spend, so the bigger vessels
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: don't always necessarily have the largest spend.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Good stuff, Todd. Nice to see you, Todd, Barbara, general
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: manager at Wellington and Z.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 2:38
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• 2:41
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