Enhancing financial and economic yield in tourism: business interviews report

Abstract

This report is part of the Research Programme ‘Enhancing Financial and Economic Yield in Tourism’. The Research Programme is a collaborative venture with funding from the Ministry of Tourism and the Tourism Industry Association of New Zealand (TIANZ), with the research being undertaken by The Tourism Recreation Research and Education Centre (TRREC) at Lincoln University. The Report presents the findings of in-depth interviews with small and medium tourism businesses carried out in Rotorua and Christchurch during mid 2006. For the purposes of this project, businesses with up to 50 staff were targeted. The objectives of this project were: 1. To better understand the business practices of small and medium tourism enterprises (SMTEs) in New Zealand, 2. To explore whether linkages can be made between business practices and financial yield, 3. To identify the business support needs and wants of SMTEs. The findings from this research now need to be integrated with all other private sector projects in this research programme, and considered alongside other recent business, government and academic literature, to ensure the scope of business practices is sufficiently focused, and to take account of any new knowledge from recent research. Industry and stakeholder input into the tool development process is paramount. These processes will determine and prioritise the business areas where business support tools are developed. Importantly, decisions that will be made post this research programme about who develops the tools, who implements and manages their delivery, how the tools will be monitored and reviewed to ensure effectiveness in the long term also need to be considered in the next phase.