Today we had a meeting with the Prime Minister (also Minister for Tourism) to discuss tourism in the Far North. The question posed by the organisers Bay of Islands Marketing Group As a Key stakeholder, what is your Far North story? A key theme from the questions/statements from the audience was help needed with infrastructure, roads and route resilience as well as marketing. The Prime Ministers response - the Far North has a very well established and successful tourism industry. There is good potential to grow tourism here. He is aware of the issues in terms of infrastructure and said the Government is spending quite a lot of money up here and is certainly very committed to ensuring the infrastructure is good and they are intending to invest a lot more up here. Mayor John Cater said we need to have a discussion and to work together because quite frankly we can not do it on our own. The Prime Minister was also challenged to come up and do the Te Houtaewa Challenge next year ... ð
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 23:44:42 +0000