Enhancing financial and economic yield in tourism: public sector: local government and regional yield report

Abstract

The programme “Enhancing Financial and Economic Yield in Tourism” has included a range of investigations into various dimensions of private sector yield of tourism businesses, as well as public sector yield of tourism at local and national levels. In this report the focus is on yield from a regional perspective. Yield in this report is understood as net financial or economic benefit. For the private sector, the measure of yield used is Economic Value Added, while for local government the measure of yield is the difference between costs and revenue. Local government yield related to tourism can best be interpreted within the context of regional total value added from tourism. While local government may have a negative yield for its own tourism-related business, it judges this to be worthwhile from the community perspective because of the commercial benefits to the community as evidenced by total value added and employment In this report the focus is on regional yield in Christchurch City, and Rotorua District, from the perspective of both the private sector and local government. We show private sector yield as Economic Value Added (EVA), which is the relevant measure for private investors, as well as the more common national accounting measure of total value added and total employment. We have estimated the private sector commercial yield on the basis of surveys of visitor expenditure and analysis of private sector financial yield ratios by sector, and the net costs and benefits to the local government sector on the basis of an analysis of local government revenue and spending.