_{3 August 2023}

Go with Tourism is sad to announce that we were unsuccessful at securing additional funding to continue our work past October 2023. We will now be taking steps to wind down the programme.

All stakeholders will be emailed individually to inform them of our next steps and how we hope to transition our useful services, assets and connections onto others in the industry to continue this great mahi and build on our success.

Go with Tourism was developed and launched by Tātaki Auckland Unlimited’s legacy organisation Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED) – the region’s former economic development agency – to address skills shortages across the Auckland region. Four months after launching in April 2019, the Government announced the initiative would receive $5.2 million from the International Visitor and Conservation Levy (IVL) to expand the programme nationwide. In October 2022, the programme was awarded an additional $2 million from the IVL to continue its work.

The Go with Tourism team would like to thank everyone for their support since 2019. We’ve been lucky to work with thousands of incredible people across New Zealand to grow our industry workforce. With your help, we placed 2023 people into new roles, 370 students into work placements, 63 students into mentorships, visited 324 schools, and reached more than 260,000 people through collaborative career events.

We are extremely proud of everything we have accomplished to date and hope that we have inspired others in the industry to think differently when it comes to solving our workforce challenges. Some of our key achievements include:

• Our Workforce Wānanga event, which brought together a range of industry stakeholders from students to industry leaders, unions to educators and interested government parties, to work together to find solutions for our workforce challenges. The outcomes of this event can be seen clearly in the Better Work Action Plan.
• Building better connections between industry and education through our education programme, work placements, career events and more.
• Supporting thousands of displaced tourism and hospitality workers through the Covid lockdowns, finding them new roles, and helping to bring them back to the industry, as borders reopened.

With endless career options and opportunities to progress or transition skills, we strongly believe that tourism should be a career of choice. We hope to see industry, educators and government continue to collaborate and support crucial efforts to rebuild the workforce and wish them the very best of luck for the future.