The hard sell

July 10, 2010
For 15 years, Paul Davis has been the man leading the way as Nelson tries to sell itself to the world, but, as Geoff Collett reports, it hasn't been easy.
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It might have been reasonable to expect - or at least hope for - some parting shots, a few bridges set alight, as Paul Davis said his final farewells.
Goodness knows he would have been justified. During the past two years, the chief executive of Nelson Tasman Tourism had sat and listened to his organisation being run down in public by its shareholders; its existence challenged by tourism operators; its finances teetering; its directors bailing out; and its one great dream for a project that could haul the industry out of its winter trough, a new regional conference centre, caught up in endless political bickering.
But, really - given Mr Davis' diplomatic style and lifetime of working in the schmooze-infested world of tourism marketing - it's no big surprise that he preferred to offer tributes and reflect on the wins.
One or two people at his farewell function muttered they could not imagine life without him. He is, after all, the only chief executive the regional tourism body has had in its 15 years - the man who can claim more responsibility than any for taking Nelson to the world.
But most - Mr Davis included - also knew that it was time for a change.
After a torrid past two years, Nelson Tasman Tourism has rethought the way it does business. There's a new hopeful mood, and Mr Davis and the company chairman say it's a good time to make way for new blood.
If nothing else, Mr Davis can satisfy himself - as he told the farewell gathering - that as he heads to a new life in Tonga, he is leaving a place that has come to understand the importance of its tourism industry.
Sometimes, though, he must have wondered.
If Mr Davis had high expectations when he scored the job of leading the newly born Nelson Tasman Tourism back in 1994, he came back to earth in a hurry.
Arriving here after 20 years working for state-owned Tourism New Zealand in Auckland, Wellington, Dunedin and New York, he discovered his new office wasn't even in town, but tucked away in the base of the windmill out at Founders Park.
While he quickly set about searching for new premises, the obscure and less- than-impressive lodgings said plenty, he muses now, about where the new company sat in the scheme of things.
Its two shareholders, the Nelson City Council and Tasman District Council, might have recognised that the region was languishing as a tourism destination, but they weren't about to lavish money on turning things around.
"I'd worked in tourism all my life and knew the value of it, knew what it could deliver to the region, knew how to get the best results from the regional tourism structure. Not everyone saw things the same way. It took a lot of work to convince people of the way things might be, " Mr Davis says.
That he at least partly succeeded is symbolised by the fact that Nelson Tasman Tourism's headquarters are now in the smart, high-profile complex at the northern entrance to the city centre, in Millers Acre. He thinks an attractive shopfront is important. "It's always been my belief that, rightly or wrongly, you're judged by what you look like."
But appearances can also deceive. While the Millers Acre building might speak of a region that proudly celebrates its tourism industry, life inside the smartly appointed offices has not always been easy.
From the beginning, Mr Davis says, the organisation "in essence . . . didn't have any money to operate".
A programme to get tourism operators contributing to a combined international marketing effort was developed, but otherwise the only answer was to front up to the councils to ask for more. Eventually, the repeated requests wore thin.
Things reached probably their nadir - but also their turning point - about a year ago. Board chairman Phil Taylor explains how things had been going steadily downhill.
Both councils had signed off a major strategic plan for tourism development, but didn't seem willing to come up with the cash to implement it.
The company had been under sustained fire from the Tasman District Council for its dependence on ratepayer support. Tasman had, however, agreed to introduce a targeted rate - an extra levy for hundreds of businesses deemed to service the tourist trade - to help pay for Nelson-Tasman Tourism marketing projects. That triggered an uproar among many operators, who questioned why they should be paying anything to an organisation they didn't think did anything for them.
The company's finances were teetering - indeed, according to Mr Taylor, it had become technically insolvent, its shareholders' equity in negative territory, the company staying afloat on letters of comfort from the councils.
Board chairwoman Donna Hiser resigned along with a recently appointed director, Paul McGuinness, leaving the company with a board of just three. While Ms Hiser blamed her workload, she also concedes now that the environment the board was operating in had become "tiring and frustrating", she was concerned about the finances, "and I didn't at that time see an easy way out of that".
Mr Taylor, himself a newcomer to the board, and suddenly thrust into the chair, recognised that the remaining directors would be badly exposed if the company failed.
Some tough talking was needed. He recalls this time last year calling together the two mayors and their chief executives and spelling out how serious things had become.
"I said, 'Look, you're going to lose all your directors and you're going to lose your CEO if we keep on going down this track. You've got to change the way you're treating this organisation. It's your company, and you've got to support it, and we're getting a lot of flak and undermining, and it can't go on like that. You've got to make up your mind - do you want this company or don't you?'."
The happy news, from Nelson Tasman Tourism's point of view, is that "they responded extremely well", Mr Taylor says.
Both councils committed to supporting the company, and appointed senior staff as temporary directors to help the board rebuild - and in Tasman's case, Mayor Richard Kempthorne says he talked to his councillors about the "unhelpful" attacks some were making.
Nelson Tasman Tourism did some soul-searching of its own, including further tightening its financial management. It has finally achieved an operating profit and significantly reduced its accumulated losses. Its flagship visitor information centre (or i-Site) in Nelson is turning a small profit - one of the few nationally to do so, Mr Taylor says.
He says Mr Davis deserves credit for the turnaround. But the question could be asked as to whether the chief executive should also take responsibility for how bad things got.
Mr Davis says the funding model was the problem.
He took the view that "if we have a dollar left in the bank at the end of the year, that's a dollar we haven't spent on marketing the region".
"So you've got to always operate in a financially prudent way, but there's no point sticking the money away for a rainy day in huge amounts."
Still, Mr Taylor says the board has recognised the need for change. It has set up a contingency fund for those rainy days, after accepting that the councils were tired of Nelson Tasman Tourism's frequent requests for more cash.
It has also accepted that it needs to try harder at communicating with the councils and with the hundreds of small-scale tourism businesses which objected so furiously at being asked to pay towards funding its marketing work - a big task that has so far not been embraced by those operators, Mr Taylor admits.
Mr Kempthorne and Nelson Mayor Kerry Marshall speak enthusiastically of Nelson Tasman Tourism.
And while Mr Marshall and Mr Taylor suggest that much of the criticism of the company has come from rural councillors in Tasman who don't believe their communities benefit from tourism, one of the longest-serving rural councillors, Trevor Norriss, is happy to credit both Mr Davis and Nelson Tasman Tourism with doing "a pretty good job" at marketing the region, and the benefits that have flowed from this.
The big issue he sees is getting those who benefit from its work to pay for it, and to recognise the reasons why the charge is justified - and that, he concedes, is proving controversial.
If the political tension has more or less settled down; and if there was a genuine note in Mr Davis' voice at his farewell when he singled out the councils for particular praise; and if he and Mr Taylor can point to the steady growth in Nelson's tourism profile as a principal legacy of his time at the helm; the frustrations still managed to follow him to the end.
In a perverse kind of way, it is almost appropriate that the single project he spent years arguing for, the one thing ahead of all else he thinks could lift the region's tourism market over winter, was yet again knocked back in his final days here, when the Nelson City Council walked away from a decision on building a conference centre.
Mr Davis admits his exasperation. "We've been clearly and consistently saying for years that a conference centre is this region's highest priority . . .
"When you grow up as a city, you provide your [community] with this kind of infrastructure, and I believe that's what our city or region needs to do, too."
It's about as near to a farewell serve as he's prepared to go. Otherwise, he maintains a diplomatic, almost Buddhist demeanour about the numerous other slings and arrows that have come his way during 15 years of trying to convince tourists to love Nelson and Nelson to love tourists.
"I've had the occasional personal attack over time, but I guess I accept that I'm the person at the forefront of the organisation and that's the way it is, " he reflects.
"We keep doing what we do, which is to plug away and point out the potential."