Commentary: Tourism growth is surging towards 2034 targets, but experts warn disaster safety for millions of visitors in high-risk zones is being overlooked, say Dr Lucia Danzi, of the Centre for Sustainability Research and Dr Ben Tombs, of the Faculty of Law.
The number of international visitors to New Zealand continues to grow, but we need to pause and plan how to keep those visitors safe from natural hazards.
The growth is driven by central and local government ambitions to return to pre-pandemic levels and double the value of tourism exports by 2034.
“Tourism growth is economic growth, which means jobs, incomes and opportunities for Kiwis,” Tourism and Hospitality Minister Louise Upston said with respect to international tourism nearing full recovery.
Upston is not wrong. After dairy, tourism is New Zealand’s second-biggest earner. According to Stats NZ, international visitors generate $18 billion in direct value added each year and support one in nine jobs across tourism and hospitality. In 2025, New Zealand saw 3.51 million overseas tourists. The government wants this number at 4.78 million by 2034 – nearly 900,000 more than the 2019 benchmark.
This has made the economics of tourism a hot topic this election. The debate has centred on mounting financial pressures faced by local communities to service increasing numbers. One of the most-debated policies is a nationwide accommodation levy, also nicknamed a bed tax, which could see international visitors paying extra to help cover tourism-related costs.
Beautiful places, high disaster risk
Talk only of growing numbers misses an important point that Aotearoa New Zealand’s most popular tourist destinations are often located in high-risk areas. Many popular destinations are close to active faults and/or volcanoes with limited infrastructure, emergency resources or medical care capacities.
For example, in Te Waipounamu-South Island, the Alpine Fault presents a significant seismic risk. There is a 75 percent likelihood of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake within the next 50 years.
This huge event will likely result in loss of life, injuries, infrastructure damage, and distress for communities, visitors included. Locations like Queenstown and Milford Sound will likely be isolated, with burdens of the initial response and care of tourists falling on already-stretched local authorities, affected communities and tourism commercial entities. Absent a cogent and coordinated response, there could be tragic consequences.
A definitional question in the legislation
In September, the Emergency Management Act replaced the CDEM Act. The new legislation is a welcome update in national emergency preparedness that seeks to link up emergency management coordination and strategy with localised planning and implementation.
However, the new Act does not quite align with the Government’s stated focus on increased tourism. There is no explicit language given to tourists or international visitors in the Act, despite this category having an outsized vulnerability and exposure to any natural hazard event.
As such, entities (like local authorities) charged with consulting communities on hazards and risks for emergency planning purposes are left with a somewhat unclear sense of how to approach this increasing category.
Possibly they may look to do so through the emergency planning provisions outlined for the broader category of ‘disproportionately affected communities’.
However, this is not a straightforward fit. Even though international visitors certainly constitute a group more affected by an emergency, tourist groups are not necessarily a ‘community’ beyond simply being visitors to New Zealand. Indeed, within the category is a huge cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and/or religious diversity.
It will likely come down to policy implementation of the new legislation, where some mechanisms for protecting visitors’ safety already exist. The Visitor Sector Emergency Advisory Group, established in 2013 and jointly chaired by the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment and Tourism New Zealand, connects the visitor sector with emergency management.
It advises on visitor needs in emergency planning and mobilises tourism sector resources during emergencies. On public conservation land, the Department of Conservation assesses natural hazard risk at its visitor sites against set thresholds, reducing the risk or closing the site when it is too high.
Additionally, MBIE’s Destination Management Guidelines encourage destinations to integrate risk and crisis management into their planning. However, these guidelines are advisory, not mandatory. Their implementation is neither funded nor systematically monitored. A statutory nod may have focused efforts a little more clearly.
In this way, government policy and government recognition of vulnerabilities appear to be at cross purposes. In June, MBIE released New Zealand’s Tourism Policy Statement to boost New Zealand’s competitiveness as a destination, while also safeguarding the reasons people may want to visit.
Upston said a “deliberate, planned approach is essential to achieving our tourism growth goals”. Yet the statement doesn’t mention natural hazards or disaster risk, nor explain how more visitors will be kept safe when the emergency system is already at capacity.
This is an uncomfortable oversight in a document that warns growth not guided by “shared, credible evidence risks becoming misaligned with visitor capacity and infrastructure readiness”. It is likely that the hard yards of implementation will be put to the tourism sector itself, adding further pressure and potential scrutiny.
Why visitor safety matters now
At any given time, large numbers of visitors are entering, leaving or travelling through New Zealand, often in the places most exposed to natural hazards. As visitor numbers grow, so does the number of people at risk.
The Tourism Policy Statement aims for a tourism system that remains resilient to shocks, yet it plans for growth without considering disaster risk. If visitor safety isn’t built into growth strategies, we risk promoting tourism in high-hazard areas without the preparedness to support it.
Implementing the new Emergency Management Act is the opportunity to close this gap. Recognising visitors’ needs and formally including (and supporting) the tourism sector in emergency planning, before a disaster, could relieve considerable pressure on emergency services and local volunteers.
The parties are united on the importance of funding tourism. Hopefully that unity extends to tourist safety, as visitor numbers rise in an environment increasingly exposed to disaster risk.
This piece first appeared on Newsroom, 2 November 2026.