Tourism
Watch those Numbers Now?
Booming Cook Islands warned about too much of a good thing
ANZ bank on Rarotonga is packed with happy customers. Happy, because there are no lines for cash deposits or wage withdrawals. Instead, there is wine and sushi from Trader Jack’s, possibly the Cook Islands’ most famous bar and restaurant.
Guests invited to the bank’s cocktail scoop up stuffed mushrooms and knock back New Zealand wines. There is so much talking that the string-band struggles to be heard. “She’s not even invited,” laughs Foodlands manager Jane Wichman, looking over at General Transport manager Jessie Sword, who winks back. One manages the island’s busiest supermarket while the other runs a container truck company which handles nearly all of $US33.5 million ($NZ78 million) in imports. Neither bank with ANZ.
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Paul Murphy, an Australian, doesn’t seem to mind the self-invited guests one little bit. He’s too busy beaming at a brand new Automatic Teller Machine, Rarotonga’s first. With double digit tourism growth, he’s happy to jump the gun on his bigger competitor, Westpac, and provide the technology that approves visitor credit card spending. Instantly.
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How long did it take before? “Sometimes it happens right away”, says Cook Islands Pearls manager Trev Bergman. “Sometimes it can take 24 hours.” Speed is important to Bergman right now. Considered the largest pearl retailer by some, their only competitor is Beachcomber Ltd. Or was. The Bergman family, long time residents that love the place and employ at least seven workers, have just bought Beachcomber from Joan Rolls, whose family has been in the Cook Islands pearl and shell industry since the turn of the century. The Bergmans are keen to keep her and the family history involved in the business while reaching forward to future technology.
The three Bergman outlets are one of three pilot businesses for EFTPOS machines. Electronic Funds Transfer Point Of Sale machines are as common as milk in the Cook Islands main trading partner, New Zealand. Now 14,300 Cook Islanders will have access to the service brought in by ANZ bank. In an economy turning over $US121 million ($NZ281.5 million), no wonder Paul Murphy is happy. Your bank manager would be happy too if four times the resident population was visiting each year. Imagine Fiji with three million visitors. That is a reality for the Cooks, not a happy tourism fantasy. But not everyone in the Cook Islands is happy.
“It’s crunch time,” says Jolene Bosanquet, “It really is.” Bosanquet, a motelier, is calling on government to declare a moratorium on tourism arrivals totalling near 70,000. Rarotonga’s waste disposal systems just cannot handle any more strain, she says. Both the island’s major hotels often stink from overloaded waste treatment plants. Bacteria rich water from septic pits soak through the ground before rising up into the lagoon. Waste washed off from tiny pig farms join hillsides eroding into the streams that also end up in the lagoons of Rarotonga, the country’s capital island. Green algae-stained coral looks natural only to those who don’t know what that signifies-polluted lagoons.
Bosanquet is also president of Taporoporoanga Ipukarea Society, one of five environmental groups in the Cook Islands. She muscled her way onto the monthly agenda of the local chamber of commerce years ago and has been twisting the ears of businesspeople ever since.
Bosanquet, a New Zealander, admits to arriving on the island some years back and being as bad as most developers: building right on the water’s edge, installing septic tanks that do not filter out enough of the bacteria. “We were ignorant then”, she says. “But we’re not ignorant now.” Tourism head Chris Wong has made some mild noises about maximum numbers but assures Cook Islanders that extra visitors can be diverted to outer islands. Or, even, away from the country completely. Wong’s has a simple answer to runaway success: quality control.
“Our philosophy of tourism development is that we focus on the delivery of quality and not quantity—that is the challenge. We have to pay more attention on our product delivery and the area of delivering a quality service and quality goods.”
Other official reaction has been equally vague. Amid the streamers and whistle blowing predictions of 4.5 percent growth over the next three years, Financial Secretary Kevin Carr sounds a proverbially small note of caution: “Visitor numbers are fast approaching saturation levels and tourism officials have already cautioned the need to expand rooms and related infrastructure.”
His minister, Finance and Prime Minister Dr Terepai Maoate, is a little more specific, in a broad kind of way. “Physically, the country’s environment will be severely tested by coastal erosion, the impact of developmental growth and expansive agricultural activity, and continue susceptibility to climate change,” he states in the country’s Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update, an annual report required by law.
“Waste management initiatives, which embrace Government’s intent to secure a landfill and sewerage treatment facility, as well as coordinated efforts to institutionalise recycling, set more determined paths to address community concerns”, says Maoate. Sounds good. Except that plans for a recycling plant have been on-and off-the drawing board for more than two years. An Asian Development Bank study to look at installing a liquid waste system has seen hundreds of thousands spent on consultants but little else, and a landfill site identified by government has met with hot local reaction.#Worse still is government’s record in the country’s second biggest industry after tourism—pearl farming.
Lack of strict monitoring has seen a disease scare on the country’s main pearl farming atoll of Manihiki, 1200 kilometres to the north of Rarotonga. Government responded quickly to news of an outbreak and sent state scientists north by plane. Regional experts were invited in to look at the lagoon and the books. Probable cause of the disease outbreak? Initial findings seem to indicate the outbreak is not as bad as first feared but is most likely due to over farming. What may be even scarier than the outbreak however, is the casual atmosphere at the top.
“Where ever you get human activity, there will be some impact,” says Marine Resources minister Dr Robert Woonton, who is also the member of parliament for Manihiki atoll. It’s an attitude reflected by a business community who have been far too busy making up for the disastrous years after the 1996 crisis to worry about too many tourists and their effect on the environment.
Back at the ANZ function, Pastor John Tangi turns to face the crowd and give the expected blessing. But first he sounds the most useful note of caution yet, warning businesspeople against getting too “greedy”. He goes on to quote, tongue only slightly in cheek for a bank cocktail, Timothy chapter 6 verse 10—”a love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”
Environmental concerns may be a gatecrasher during a welcome tourism boom, but, like ANZ’s Paul Murphy, Cook Islanders are going to have to grin and bare it — or risk once again losing everything.
