The Destinate Weekly Roundup w/c 26 October 2026
There are some really useful tourism stories this week, and a few of them go well beyond the usual conversation about visitor numbers.
What stood out to me most was the growing debate around how tourism is funded in New Zealand, a new European investigation into Booking.com that raises questions about paid visibility and consumer trust, some very strong evidence from Australia that face-to-face travel selling still converts, and a niche cruise partnership that shows how regional tourism businesses can benefit from highly targeted international markets.
There is also another encouraging signal around the continued appetite for locally led and immersive travel, particularly from Australian travellers.
Here’s what I think is worth paying attention to this week.
The Tourism Funding Charter has put a long-running issue firmly back on the table
Over the weekend, the New Zealand Tourism Funding Charter gained significant national attention after Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown and more than 100 supporters backed a call for a more enduring way to fund tourism infrastructure, destination marketing, visitor services and major-event activity.
The Charter proposes allocating around $220 million a year, equivalent to approximately 5 percent of GST collected from tourism expenditure, with the majority of that money remaining in the region where it is generated. The argument is fairly straightforward: central government collects billions of dollars from visitor spending each year, while the cost of hosting those visitors falls heavily on councils and local communities.
This is important because tourism businesses rely on far more than their own marketing to generate demand.
Regional tourism organisations build destination awareness, attend trade events, host media and buyers, support business events, develop campaigns and help visitors move beyond the major gateways. Local councils fund infrastructure, public spaces, visitor facilities and services that contribute directly to the experience people have when they arrive.
When those organisations are underfunded or operating year to year without certainty, the impact eventually reaches operators too.
For smaller businesses in particular, strong destination-level activity can provide reach and influence that would be impossible to fund independently.
I think operators should pay attention to this discussion rather than seeing it as something that only concerns councils and RTOs. If an enduring funding model is eventually developed, the next question will be how it is governed, where investment is directed and how smaller businesses and regional communities benefit from it.
That conversation is just as important as the funding figure itself.
Watch out for The Tourism Chat Show episode this week where I chat with Annie Dundas about this very initiative.
More information: Read more about the New Zealand Tourism Funding Charter
Booking.com is under investigation, and paid visibility is part of the issue
The European Commission opened formal proceedings against Booking.com last week under the Digital Services Act.
The investigation covers fraudulent accommodation listings, phishing scams involving reservation and guest data, and whether properties that pay higher commissions to appear more prominently in search results are being clearly identified as advertisements. No breach has been established at this point, and the investigation is ongoing.
That last point is particularly interesting from a tourism distribution perspective.
Many tourism businesses already understand that visibility on online platforms can be influenced by commercial participation, whether that means higher commission, promotional programmes, preferred-placement schemes or discounting.
The question is whether the traveller understands why they are seeing one option before another.
For operators, I think this is a useful prompt to look beyond the headline commission charged by an OTA and consider the full commercial picture.
If you are paying extra to improve visibility, joining discount programmes or giving away margin in return for ranking, you need to know whether the resulting bookings are genuinely incremental and profitable.
It is also a reminder that trust matters enormously.
Customers need to know that booking messages, payment requests and confirmations are legitimate, particularly when scams increasingly mimic real communications.
A good practical step would be to review the customer journey from the booking onwards and make sure guests know exactly how your business communicates, what payment requests should look like, and who to contact if something seems unusual.
More information: European Co
Face-to-face travel selling is still producing serious numbers in Australia
I found the results from the latest Phil Hoffmann Travel Expo particularly interesting.
The Adelaide event attracted more than 3,500 consumers in one day, generated more than 1,000 deposits, and produced an estimated A$15 million in sales. Around 60 airlines, cruise lines and tour operators participated. Flight Centre also recently attracted around 8,000 people to its Sydney travel expo.
These figures come from the agency group itself, so I would treat them as reported results rather than independently audited data, but even allowing for that, the level of conversion is impressive.
We spend so much time talking about digital marketing, social media, AI and self-service booking that it is easy to assume consumers no longer want to sit down with someone and talk through a holiday.
Clearly, plenty still do.
For New Zealand operators, that does not mean everybody should suddenly buy a stand at an Australian consumer expo.
What it does suggest is that there may be more opportunity to support the retail agencies and wholesalers already attending these events.
Could you provide a strong booking offer through an existing distribution partner?
Could an advisor use a short video or one-page itinerary to explain your product?
Could your experience become part of a New Zealand themed promotion rather than trying to attend the event yourself?
For smaller businesses, participating indirectly through the right trade partner may be far more efficient than trying to create consumer awareness from scratch.
More information: Phil Hoffmann Travel Expo results
Australians are continuing to choose locally led and immersive travel
Intrepid Travel has reported its busiest September on record, carrying more than 35,000 travellers globally, with Australians making up 43 percent of customers.
One figure that stood out was the 145 percent year-on-year growth in Australia and New Zealand trips booked by Australian customers. Intrepid is also reporting strong demand for active and nature-based experiences and has expanded its 2027 programme with more locally led itineraries.
It is worth being careful here because this is one company’s performance rather than a measure of the entire Australian market.
However, it does fit with a broader pattern we have been seeing.
Australian travellers are looking for experiences that feel local, immersive and a little less obvious, which creates an opportunity for smaller New Zealand operators who can offer genuine personality and connection.
I think the useful action here is not simply to chase Intrepid or another touring company.
Instead, take a look at the products you currently present to touring operators and ask whether they actually explain the local story.
A product can be operationally perfect for touring but still sound completely generic on paper.
Who does the traveller meet? What do they learn? What makes the place different?
Is there a local host or story that could never be recreated somewhere else?
Those are increasingly important selling points.
More information: Intrepid reports record September demand
Travel advisors are being given more control over their margin
Another small but interesting distribution development this week comes from UK tour operator USAirtours, which has launched a new online booking platform for travel advisors.
Among the features are live pricing, price-drop notifications, instant booking documents and adjustable commission, which allows advisors more control over the margin they earn within a booking. The platform is initially focused on the US,
Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, with additional destinations and multi-centre itineraries being added over the coming months.
The relevance for a New Zealand operator is not the platform itself.
It is the way retail distribution is evolving.
Travel advisors are increasingly being given tools that allow them to manage margin, build more complex itineraries and quote customers quickly without waiting for manual responses.
That means suppliers who sit further down the distribution chain need to have their own commercial settings right.
If your trade pricing leaves no room for a wholesaler and a retail advisor to both earn a margin, it becomes difficult to distribute.
Equally, adding multiple layers of margin without understanding the final retail price can leave your product looking expensive compared with direct alternatives.
This is a good time of year to review not only what commission you offer, but how your rate behaves once it passes through multiple layers of distribution.
The goal should be a rate structure that works for everybody involved, including the customer.
More information: USAirtours launches new advisor booking platform
What I’d be thinking about this week
There are a few very different stories here, but I think they all come back to one thing: tourism businesses need to look beyond the transaction immediately in front of them and understand the wider system that creates it.
Tourism funding affects whether destinations can build demand.
OTA structures influence which products travellers see.
Travel advisors and consumer events influence what gets booked.
And commission structures determine whether an experience is commercially attractive to the people being asked to sell it.
So rather than asking only “how do I get more bookings?”, I would spend some time thinking about where those bookings are actually coming from and what needs to happen before your product ever reaches the customer.
For me, that is the biggest takeaway this week.
Some of the best tourism sales opportunities are not created by finding a brand-new customer. They come from understanding the journeys, partnerships and distribution channels that are already bringing the right customer into your market, and finding a smart way to become part of them.
The Destinate Weekly Roundup is a regular look at the tourism sales, marketing, visitor-market and distribution developments worth paying attention to, with practical takeaways for New Zealand tourism businesses.
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