Tracy Pool - Going the extra mile

She may have left school and her tiny hometown at 16, headed for bright lights and the first career that was on offer - hairdressing, but 40 years later Arrowtown’s Tracy Pool had become the boss of a leading Queenstown hospitality company managing 11 bars.

No fancy degrees needed, just plain hard work, financial experience and know-how.

She’d turned her decades of keeping accounts and bookkeeping for local companies, and years of hospitality experience into an impressive career - Republic Hospitality’s group general manager, chief operating officer and shareholder by the time she left in 2022.

“I started out with Watertight Investments on 12 hours a week,” she says. “There were two venues then and we built it up to 11 bars.” Tracy created a management company to oversee the venues working with Immigration NZ - a massive task, finishing up at the top of the corporate hospitality ladder.

As a mum of two young boys with husband of 35 years Greg, Tracy had experienced all the challenges that go with raising a family in Queenstown.

With Greg owning a building business and an early 90s financial crisis affecting Queenstown’s economy, they decided to move to the West Coast for 18 months, renting out their home. “It was just so expensive to live here so we moved to Runanga where Mum and Dad had a pub at the time.” Tragedy struck the Mount Davy Coal Mine where Greg was working, three construction workers killed, the workers protected by bulletproof glass from then on.

“It rained for 18 months.”

So they happily returned to Arrowtown where Tracy worked in retail, then as a bookkeeping contractor until joining Republic.

Three years ago she became co-manager of Queenstown’s busy Citizen’s Advice Bureau where she’s been a fierce advocate for migrants who’ve been exploited and are negotiating the minefield of New Zealand’s visa compliance regulations.

Here she found her niche, not just a job, but her passion. It’s a role that requires empathy, kindness, practical life experience and understanding, all attributes which she possesses, plus plenty of ‘go the extra mile’.

Tracy oozes empathy: “The day I was forced to lay off 40 hospitality staff, who I’d hired during Covid times, was one of the worst days of my life,” she says. “A week later the government extended the subsidies, and we hired them all back.” All but three of their 100 staff were migrants.

“During my time in hospo I worked with some amazing entrepreneurial young kids, who I hugely admire.”

She even scored a trip to Europe on Jäger in her 50s for a job well done. “My first trip to Oktoberfest.”

After leaving Republic Tracy started volunteering at CAB to keep her brain active. “If I couldn’t answer queries for our hospitality staff, or help them myself, I’d send them to the CAB,” she says. While hers is a paid role there’s still plenty of ‘volunteering’ going on outside of those hours.

Right now they’re desperate for volunteers, preferably people who’ve done those hard yards themselves: “People who’ve sat across the table and been there, who have empathy.

“If we could just get the community to realise that people need help here,” she says. “They don’t like to think that things are not quite right, so it’s brushed under the carpet.

“There are migrant women here who have alarm buttons in their houses to protect them from violent husbands and partners,” she says. There are good employers but also bad, and while cheaper housing is the main issue Tracy reckons landlords get a bad rap. “Everyone thinks they’re wealthy and rich, but they have huge overheads and it’s hard for them too.”

She says Queenstown’s a hard town to live in. “You’ve got to have some resilience.”

Tracy learned that at a young age, hers an idyllic seaside upbringing in Takaka, Golden Bay, where her dad, of Ngāti Awa ki Kāpiti descent, was the perfect fisherman, hunter and shellfish gatherer.

Second eldest of five, Tracy was “shy and quiet”. “My first traffic ticket was on our motorbike to a School Cert exam with no licence, registration, or warrant, at 15. The car wasn’t working so Mum wrote a letter to get me off.”

With her dad one of 14 kids there were always plenty of relatives visiting for beach holidays.

Tracy leapt at the opportunity to learn hairdressing through the Māori Affairs Trade Training Programme in Christchurch, leaving Golden Bay High at 16.

“We were the first intake of girls – 13 of us and 76 boys all together in our hostel learning trades.”

Here she got into Kapa Haka competitions.

There were several moves to Australia, Tracy meeting Greg, from Waihi Beach, sent by a friend to collect her at Sydney Airport. They lived at Waihi for a while after marrying quite quickly at her mother’s suggestion.

“We married on New Year’s Eve and had a big party at home. The local baker was a massive stoner and the profiterole cake with chocolate fish fell apart,” she grins. “The baker was arrested the next week. Mum was mortified.

“I’m still waiting on my engagement ring!”