Queenstown is best known for bungy jumping, ski fields and a tourism economy that runs hot every summer and winter. This week the resort town is trying to sell a different story about itself, one built on software, data and travel technology rather than jet boats and gondolas.
WiT, short for Web in Travel and described as the Asia Pacific region’s leading travel technology media and events platform, opens its first New Zealand gathering in Queenstown today. WiT Queenstown runs across 20 and 21 July and brings together senior executives, founders and investors from the travel technology world. For the organisers it is less a one-off conference than a shop window for an ambition that has been building quietly since 2024.
That ambition belongs to Technology Queenstown, the trading name of the Whakatipu Hangarau Trust. The group was set up two years ago with a blunt goal, to build a billion dollars of annual technology sector output in the Queenstown Lakes District over the next 20 years. In practical terms that means lifting technology from less than 2 percent of the district’s economy to more than 15 percent, a shift that would reshape what the region is known for and how its workforce earns a living.
The reason for wanting that shift is not hard to find. Tourism and hospitality account for more than 60 percent of the Queenstown Lakes economy, a concentration that has left the district badly exposed whenever visitor numbers fall away. The border closures of the early 2020s emptied the town almost overnight and reminded locals how much rides on a single industry. A technology sector, the thinking goes, would give the district a second engine that keeps humming when the tourists thin out and would offer higher paid, year round work to people who currently rely on seasonal jobs.
Travel technology is the first cluster Technology Queenstown has chosen to back, and the logic is that the region already has a deep well of tourism knowledge to draw on. A town that hosts millions of visitor movements a year understands booking systems, guest experience, logistics and payments from the inside. The pitch to the WiT crowd is that Queenstown can turn that operating experience into products and companies rather than simply buying software built somewhere else.
Leading the effort is Sarah Russell, appointed as Technology Queenstown’s first chief executive in December 2024. Russell grew up in Christchurch and moved back across the Tasman from Sydney to take the role. She holds a Master of Commerce in economics from the University of Canterbury, spent years in senior roles at Commonwealth Bank of Australia and in 2017 co-founded an artificial intelligence software company, a background that spans banking, technology and the numbers side of running a regional economy.
“I’m thrilled to be leading Technology Queenstown and to foster the growth of a vibrant technology ecosystem in the region,” Russell said when her appointment was announced.
The trust’s chair, Roger Sharp, framed the hire as a turning point for the wider lower South Island, not just the resort town. “Sarah’s experience and drive will see us expand our impact on the Queenstown Lakes District and Central Otago as we embark on making a material difference to the future economy of the region through building out its tech sector,” Sharp said.
Behind the leadership sits a list of foundation members that is heavy on established names. Accenture, which helped shape the group’s strategic blueprint, sits alongside One NZ, Genesis Energy, SBS Bank, the University of Otago, law firm Russell McVeagh, Queenstown Resort College, investment firm North Ridge Partners and the NZX. Queenstown Airport and Destination Queenstown have both signed on more recently, a sign that the tourism institutions themselves are backing the plan rather than treating it as a threat.
Part of the longer term plan is education. Technology Queenstown has flagged its intention to help launch a tertiary technology campus in the district, giving young people a reason to study and stay rather than heading to Auckland, Wellington or overseas. The University of Otago partnership is an early step in that direction. Building a workforce is one of the harder parts of any regional technology push, because companies will not base themselves where they cannot hire, and skilled people will not move somewhere without jobs and study options waiting for them.
There is plenty of reason for caution. Regional economic diversification schemes have a long history of ambitious targets and slow results, and a billion dollars of new output over 20 years is a very large number for a district of Queenstown’s size. Housing is already scarce and expensive, which makes it hard to attract the workers a growing sector would need. And the travel technology field is fiercely competitive, dominated by global platforms with budgets no New Zealand town can match.
Hosting WiT Queenstown is a way of testing whether the ambition can attract the people and money that would make it real. Getting the region’s travel technology cluster in front of Asia Pacific investors and operators, in a town that sells itself well, is exactly the kind of first move a young economic development agency needs. Whether it turns into companies, jobs and a genuinely broader economy is a question that will take far longer than a two day summit to answer.
What do you think, can Queenstown build a serious technology sector alongside its tourism trade, or is the region’s economy always going to live and die by visitor numbers? Share your view in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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