Tourist Motel Corporation of New Zealand
The announcement will herald a brave new era of "hands-on-government" in the tourism industry that will hark back to the good old days of the 50's when publicly owned assets and control were at the forefront of New Zealand's burgeoning tourism industry.
According to John Key: "We've already got skin in a fleet of planes, i-Sites, a star rating agency and tourism marketing, so it was an easy decision for us to add a chain of motels to the set"
An extensive network of government owned motels will be built and operated to strict minimum standards ensuring that all visitors can enjoy accommodation regardless of age, disability, race, marital status, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or employment status.
The principles of the Treaty of Waitangi will be embedded into day-to-day motel operations and regional co-ops will elect motel management to ensure the motelier behind the reception desk reflects the unique cultural diversity of Aotearoa.
The new motels will be compulsorily Qualmark star-rated and Tourism NZ will flex its marketing strength by awarding a priority-listing to the government-owned motel chain on their website, newzealand.com.
Further marketing initiatives will include making full use of the government's stake in the i-Site network by using this channel to distribute brightly coloured brochures (on recyclable paper) for each motel.
Old-school protectionism will also make a welcome return to the tourism industry. It's been decided that the new motel chain will only list room inventory on approved New Zealand domiciled Online Travel Agency websites. Those nasty foreign-owned OTAs will be avoided at all cost.
The chain of motels will also opt-out of TripAdvisor and legislation will soon be passed that will ban all guest feedback on this forum. It is believed that government ownership and strict controls will eliminate the distraction of monitoring the opinion of guests that will be staying at the vast government-owned motel network.
