Issue #968

by Sharon Fifield - Chief Executive, Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce

There’s no denying it, one thing Queenstown does well is host our visiting friends.

We need to remember that! If you have a visitor from out of town, do you take them into downtown Queenstown? I hope so. It’s magic where the mountains meet the lake and so many of our out-of-town friends would dream to have daily access* to a place like ours.

Speaking of hosting, we’re playing our part to keep visitation rolling post Winter Pride and Snow Machine. This week we will be hosting around 80 of our Chamber peers from across NZ for our annual NZ Chamber conference, powered by 2degrees. The team and I are looking forward to showing off Queenstown to our colleagues and discussing ways we can collectively represent business better.

The Chamber network is strong. Together, we represent over 22,000 businesses around New Zealand and have a strong independent voice to government. I’ve been impressed with the responsiveness of central government to some of our advocacy of late particularly around immigration and housing.

On the ground, we’re a small team at the Chamber but it’s amazing how much you can get done when you have such strong and supportive business partners. Thank you to our partners for rolling out a great Queenstown welcome for the delegates this week, it’s impressive! Thank you, Queenstown Airport (ZQN), AJ Hackett Bungy, Heritage hotel, Gibbston Valley, RealNZ for your support.

If you’re in business, I really do hope you can see the benefit of joining the Chamber. We’re an engaged, active and dare I say it, smart and supportive crowd. I have been amazed at how much business is created just from coming along to a Ba5 and enjoying a drink, chat and great hospitality.

As for the conference, we’ve strategically made sure they all have some free time on Wednesday evening to sample the great dining and nightlife in Queenstown, I’m sure you’ll show them a great time. We’ll also do our best to throw Auckland Chamber CEO Simon Bridges off the Kawarau Bridge on Thursday given he’s our top cheerleader. It’s in print now.

(*Access: I know, not always logistically easy for locals and visitors and I am concerned about our delegates’ experience of getting in and around the CBD easily. But fortunately, these will be leaders from Chambers around NZ that know exactly what we’re talking about. Our infrastructure issues are not unique. But I hope you see we’re doing all we can to advocate for improvements.)