To start 2026 on a positive note, despite the weather, enjoy a brief promotional video posted by TRM about 11 years ago (although a High Tea at the Chateau is now a fading memory) that shows why tourists still love to visit and stay in Turangi, regardless of the Toe Paw Council’s unusual advertising strategy. Judge for yourself.
Turangi summer?
Now that most of the Christmas-New Year holiday crowds are returning to their homes, the weather will improve, and we will look forward to the usual summer temperatures. The recent weather was more like winter.
If you can remember ten years ago, can you imagine that the Toe Paw Council anticipated this and erected a large billboard at the northern entrance for the summer traffic to celebrate skiing? TRM had to expose it on our blog before they would change it.
TRM blogs on how not to promote Turangi deserve a rerun:
How not to promote Turangi?
In response to allegations that TRM have been kind to Toe Paw Council lately – since they decided to review the status of Turangi for their “strategic destination management plan” – refer back to 2019 and 2014 reports to confirm how consistent the TRM recommendations are…
From TRM 2019 Blog:
TRM really do try to be “relentlessly positive”, but… over the last couple of weeks, TRM’s Facebook page received much support from local criticism of Taupo’s method to promote Turangi. They advised that Turangi is now going to be promoted as the “Gateway to the National Park”. This suggests Turangi has nothing to offer. Then their main billboard entering Turangi from Toe-paw advertised skiing for the summer. No wonder everyone complained.
Now – thank you to all the complainants – they replaced the skiing sign with the tramping image, but this is just as bad in encouraging any tourists to travel on to the National Park. The image of tourist trampers was on SH47, looking back at Mt. Doom about 50 km from Turangi. Ruapehu people must love Toe-paw, continually promoting their region.
Toe-paw Council needs reminding again: the most significant industry for Turangi tourism is trout fishing.
The best reminder is a brief slide show TRM posted over five years ago. The subject matter was “Tourist attractions in Turangi?” Toe-paw Council must have missed it…
Before Facebook arrived, TRM posted a Daily report on tourist activities in Turangi, particularly trout fishing. This Daily Blog was well supported by TRM inmates, tourist anglers, and others who have holiday homes in Turangi, after DOC (the Department of Conservation) stopped publishing its “Target Taupo” publication. Indeed, TRM was often in trouble for pointing out the obvious – similar to the misleading signage above. To indicate how consistent TRM has been, the following “Daily Report” was prepared in 2014 to further promote Turangi as a Trout Town. Enjoy!
TURANGI – TROUT FISHING CAPITAL OF THE WORLD…?
Fly fishing is critical, vital, and essential to Turangi. It is the very soul of Turangi – far more so than anywhere else in NZ. True! Therefore when anglers visit to fly fish the Tongariro they are considered far more critical than just ordinary common garden variety tourists and become VIT’s (Very Important Tourist) at TRM. To explain this TRM must emphasise and reinstate that important distinction as follows:
Turangi’s only industry is “tourism”. OK? Tourism is the lifeblood of Turangi and it follows that the biggest tourism industry in the Taupo region is fishing. It generates $29 million every year (This was posted in 2014) and employs almost 300 people. This is not just any old “gut feeling” estimate. Those economic stats were professionally assessed by DOC (Department of Conservation are the Taupo fishery managers) in their independent review of the fishery in 2013 after interviewing over 900 people.
That clearly makes fishing the biggest business in this region even though it has been overlooked by Taupo Council’s tourist promotion people – “DGLT” (Destination Great Lake Taupo). For the 2013-14 tourist season they listed “weddings” and “youth” as their priority sectors for promotion. Amazingly, unbelievably, fishing was not even mentioned.
TRM was wondering how to go about illustrating the relative importance to little Turangi (?) so we compared the back-up facilities to indicate the significance of fishing to Turangi…
Auckland has about a zillion residents population and three tackle shops dedicated to freshwater fly fishing. OK?
Taupo has a resident population of over 27,000 (Posted in 2014) and has two tackle shops – Fishing & Hunting and Taupo Rod & Tackle. OK so far? Turangi’s resident population is one tenth of Taupo and also has two tackle shops – Sporting Life, and Creel, plus, in addition, several other web-based tackle dealers operating from their home base. (Before Covid there were four shops but two closed their retail business as “covid” casualties.)
I hope that is a simple illustration of the relative importance of fishing to Turangi. It is Turangi’s main vital lifeblood. Turangi’s claim to fame was historically firmly established by large signs on each of the three main road entry points welcoming tourists to “The Trout Fishing Capital of the World”. Taupo Council removed the iconic signs to convert Turangi into the “Source of the Lake”. (Image below) What is that? Have you ever heard such nonsense? But they took away Turangi’s pride as well.
This was not just PR hype. Taupo failed Turangi. Very sad. Despite the Taupo Council desperately trying to transform Turangi into a distant remote southern suburb of Taupo by removing the only signs that established Turangi as a destination in its own right, the enviable reputation as the Trout Fishing Capital of the World survived. It deserved to. It is such a wonderful fishing destination. It has everything.
Then there is the equally historical and economic and strategic importance of the Tongariro River to Turangi but we are confident you already know all about that – even if Council doesn’t.
But to be fair, for tourist impact comparison purposes, we should also consider the other important but secondary tourist attractions. In addition to the fishing are the nearby major national parks, Kaimanawa and in particular Tongariro National Park – established in 1887. The park has been judged independently (i.e. it is not just TRM’s opinion) as a place of outstanding universal value; part of a common heritage of mankind. World heritage status was accorded by UNESCO on two counts; natural landscape (1990) and cultural landscape (1993). The park is one of only 20 or so dual world heritage sites along with Uluru, Australia, and Machu Picchu, Peru (only our dual heritage area has the huge advantage of being closer to Turangi offering trout fishing as well)…
The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is the most popular one day walk in NZ so it is important. i.e. In the Taupo iSite it is their biggest display effort to send tourists about 90 km away south into the Ruapehu region – even beyond Turangi… Why do they send all their tourists away to another region? Well done Taupo, or are we missing something here? Why not send them to Rotorua?
This wonderful alpine crossing track attracted somewhere about 70-80,000 people per year (2019 Update – over 140,000!) to walk the 19 km. It is a “must-do” according to Lonely Planet. So DGLT decided it was their most important tourist asset to promote. But as usual Taupo Council overlooked the fact that trout fishing is even more important to this region as fishing easily exceeds that number of visitors. Taupo Council do not understand or believe that either, so we have to spell it out to them too.
DOC sells about 50,000 fishing licences a year for the Taupo Region. They used to sell about 85,000 but trout fishing has not been effectively promoted for many years so licence sales have fallen considerably. But there is a key difference, compared to the Tongariro Crossing numbers, for which tourists only usually visit once, stay one night and we never see them again.
Comparatively, anglers stay for much longer periods and return repeatedly, every season for many years. At a guess, we estimate their annual visits are well over 200,000. But as TRM has a vested interest in all this, our biased opinion might be suspect, and we will no doubt be accused of favouring fishing. But that also might be why TRM targets anglers. OK?
TRM has regular angler guests (inmates?) who have been visiting from Australia, USA, Canada, UK, as well as Auckland and Wellington for over 15 years and stay for a week or two at least two or three times each year.
Therefore when that is extrapolated into the calculations the trout fishing visitors outnumber everyone else combined. Genuinely nice people, they stay much longer and return year after year, so TRM ensures the accommodation “package” deals are pitched to encourage them to return.
But we have to wonder how many more angling tourists would come if the Taupo fishery was promoted by more than just one little motel. The others don’t even realise…
SWMBO thought you would like to know…
And that was over ten years ago. Little has changed. Council and DOC continue to fail Turangi. Meanwhile, the crowding on the Tongariro Crossing during the tourist season continues to frustrate tourists and the trout fishing is the best for at least 20 years.
Last, we hope you will love Taupo’s aerial photo. Notice how the heart is positioned over the Tongariro River delta and Turangi town can easily be spotted to the right of the heart. Meanwhile Toe Paw is rumoured to be somewhere in the distant gloom. So we should be grateful. Oh dear…
Last, more recently, is Turangi’s missing iconic statue. The Council removed it but cannot decide on a suitable alternative location. It is now rusting away in the Council yard. They imagine that tourists do not notice.