For much of the new millennium, New Zealand has been the hot global ticket. Twice named Lonely Planet’s top destination, it is touted for its bicultural dynamism, can-do creativity, fair-go egalitarianism, and laid-back leisure-loving lifestyle. And then, of course, there is the scenery. No longer the dreary sheep farm at the end of the world, thenewNew Zealand—Aotearoa New Zealand—is at the world’s fresh cutting edge: clean, green, technologically capable, aesthetically innovative “Islands of Imagination” whipped by the Pacific’s brisk winds of change.¹ Yet in 2001, when Aotearoa New Zealand strode onto the world stage, it did...

They called it the netherworld. Situated in the isolated heart of the North Island of New Zealand, the spa town and ethnic tourism enclave of Rotorua was at once a wonderland and a hellhole. The tiny settler township and the adjoining Māori villages of Whakarewarewa and Ōhinemutu were built atop an active volcanic plateau, where sulfurous steam rose from gaping cracks in the ground and luminous pools of mineral-tinted water or mud bubbled away in residents’ backyards. To the late Victorian eye, it was a space in which nature was uncannily, violently present in its most elemental form, enfolded with...

At the turn of the twentieth century, the small Māori village of Whakarewarewa, at the heart of New Zealand’s isolated inland thermal district, played host to tourists by the thousands. They came to soak and socialize at the spa built by the government in the nearby town of Rotorua and to sightsee, taking in the widely touted geological wonders of the region, at their most spectacular on the government reserve that adjoined the Māori village. And they came to encounter “the Maori at Home,” as promised in the guidebooks and pamphlets published by the government and tour companies.

An afternoon...

In 1840 the British Crown signed a treaty with representatives of Māori tribes to officially establish British dominion in the islands of New Zealand and pave the way for systematic colonization. In the same year a new figure, “the New Zealander,” made an appearance in a review by Whig historian Thomas Babington Macaulay printed in theEdinburgh Review. Macaulay’s subject was the continued dynamism of the Roman Catholic church, which “may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge...

“All around New Zealand, a lot of Māori stories help us define this place and understand it, and where people have taken that up, it’s made all the difference to the visitor. You’ll come for the scenery, but you’ll take away something else.” So begins the narrator ofThe Tourism Edge, a twenty-minute promotional documentary produced by Tourism New Zealand’s (TNZ’s) Māori development team in 2005, intended for use by Regional Tourism Organizations (RTOs) and at industry conferences. TNZ is the state body that (in partnership with industry) coordinates and advises marketing efforts across the country and produces international publicity...

Tourism and cinema, it has been argued, are natural companions. Twin components of the industrial machine of public imagination, both promise escape, pleasure, and all the sensations and prerogatives of mobility.¹ From the outset, film offered experiences of virtual travel, cashing in on the modern fascination for motion and the hunger to “bring things ‘closer’ spatially and humanly,” if only by their likeness.² Tourism, meanwhile, found in film a promotional idiom and instrument that turns places into destinations, and destinations into bundles of affect, story, image, and sensation that circulate globally, inviting the audiences they touch to travel in turn....

As the first decade of the new millennium drew to a close, tourism growth slowed in Aotearoa New Zealand. Rising fuel prices took their toll, as did the nation’s stronger currency (the neoliberal economy turned victim of its own success). Then global recession set in. State policy has shifted: the new emerging market is now China, the new mantra “sustainability” rather than growth, with ecological outcomes now ranking alongside high-quality experiences, growing investment, and community partnering as strategic priorities.¹ As at the turn of the previous century, the art of government has always demanded reflexivity, a state ready to propose...