TIA Blog

	Safety first in adventure tourism
	By MARTIN SNEDDEN - 09 May 2013

I know I’m on a hiding to nothing sticking my head up to defend the safety culture within New Zealand’s adventure tourism industry in a week that the coroner has passed down his verdict on the cause of the Fox Glacier crash which took nine lives, some of them international visitors. The families are naturally still grieving and have an absolute right to strongly express their views.

But some things have to be said.

It’s clear that avoidable safety errors either directly caused or contributed to the Fox Glacier crash. But the emotion around this, something which will almost certainly recur when the results of the Carterton ballooning accident investigation are made public, shouldn’t prevent media and public recognition of the fact that significant safety improvements have been initiated and embedded within the industry since the results of the 2009-10 Labour Department adventure safety review became known.

Adventure tourism inherently carries risk for participants. No amount of risk management can eliminate this. But the customer has an absolute right to expect that processes are in place to eliminate avoidable risk. Sadly, that wasn’t the case in the Fox Glacier crash. No one is trying to defend these types of accidents, but we are focused on applying the learnings as quickly and effectively as possible.

 ‘Adventure Safety’ is one of five major strategic priorities for TIA, which has close to 400 adventure and outdoor operators amongst our 1500 members. We have two skilled senior staff dedicated fulltime to delivery of this strategy.

In early 2011, the Department of Labour contracted TIA, with the support of Outdoors New Zealand, to create a website dedicated to safety in adventure tourism. SupportAdventure.co.nz, launched in May 2012, is the first website of its kind in the world. It includes comprehensive safety information and advice, and acts as a safety information and benchmarking tool for operators and regulators. It has come from the industry and is now being used regularly by operators.

Since 2011 TIA, using the skills and experience of a number of senior private adventure operators and other experts, has embarked on a detailed and intensive process to create world-leading adventure safety guidelines customised for specific activities. The first set of these – covering canyoning, caving and indoor rock climbing – are complete and in use now. The next set – covering heli-skiing, quad-biking, high-wire crossing, and abseiling - are under development and will be launched later this year. TIA will continue this process until all high risk adventure activities have been dealt with.

Whilst these are ‘guidelines’ rather than ‘regulations’, operators know that, in the case of an accident investigation, their actions will be judged against these standards.  The fact that these guidelines have been developed in concert with, rather than in isolation from, operators has given them much greater accuracy, credibility and speedy acceptance by operators.

A key difference between guidelines and regulations is their ability to be changed quickly in light of new information within a dynamic sector.

In addition, both TIA and Outdoors New Zealand have provided strong support and advice to the Labour Group (now within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) and to operators on safety initiatives around the new adventure activity regulations, such as external auditing, registration, and drug and alcohol testing.

Over and above this, since the Fox Glacier crash changes have been made and are still ongoing in the adventure aviation sector. CAA regulations have been tightened. Safety awareness has heightened.

In the 2009-10 Labour Department review, there was recognition that most operators were responsible and safe but that a much better nationwide risk management framework must be established. Operators did not resist those findings and have enthusiastically been part of the subsequent and on-going change process. These operators know that primary responsibility for the safety of their customers rests on their shoulders.

The inaugural ‘Great Adventure’ adventure and outdoor tourism conference is another sign that the industry is becoming more cohesive. Safety, and the events of this week, are firmly on the radar of all conference delegates. These operators are proud of what they have achieved for tourism in New Zealand and they know their future reputation and success is inextricably tied in with them showing to the world that this is a safe industry.

This is work in progress. There is much still to be done. But, within the emotion of these incredibly sad and avoidable accidents, please don’t underestimate what has already been, and what is currently being, achieved.