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Backpackers: The next generation?
Seasonality, defined by Butler (2001, p. 5) as a “temporal imbalance in the
phenomenon of tourism”, is certainly affects New Zealand’s STEs, particularly
in regards to their lifestyles. For most of the country, “high season” falls between
December and late March, “shoulder seasons” extend into the spring and fall,
and “low season” dominates the balance of the year. While seasonality causes
considerable concerns for suppliers attempting to maintain consistency in
revenues and staffing levels, Butler discusses the positive aspects of seasonality
as well, theorising that less busy seasons allow communities and service
providers to have time for recuperation and restoration. Ateljevic and Doorne
(2000a) concur, writing that seasonality offers a welcome break for small
operators in New Zealand.
Additional research has underlined further commonalities amongst STEs in this
country. Two separate studies determined that a majority of tourism operators
were relatively recent arrivals in the region (Ateljevic & Doorne, 2000a, 2004).
One study found that 70% of operators had no previous experience in tourism
(Page et al., 1999). Entry into STEs has relatively low barriers in terms of capital,
skills and experience. This in turn encourages high levels of start-ups and
relatively slim profit margins required for survival (Shaw & Williams, 2004).
According to Cressy and Cowling (1996), small businesses often share key
features:
• the owners have a significant portion of their own wealth invested in the
business; and
• the business may rely heavily on the owners/operators, creating a
potentially imbalanced [flat] management structure that may lack
financial, human resource, management or marketing skills.
There tends to be little division of labour within STEs; owners are managers,
front line personnel, and maintenance workers. In addition, because they
provide much of the financing themselves, there is often limited requirement to
produce or implement a formal business plan (Shaw & Williams, 2004). A 1994
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