Queenstown sits on the shores of Lake Wakatipu at the lower end of New Zealand’s South Island. It is a pristine area renowned for adventure sports and tourism.

Tourism is the mainstay of the local visitor economy supported by an engaging events calendar. On the business events side the focus is on incentives, supported by facilities for meetings of up to 450 pax.

In order to preserve the pristine nature of the area (and to leverage the tourism opportunities) Destination Queenstown engaged with the local community to come up with a strategic plan to achieve carbon zero by 2030.

The starting point was to adopt the goals of the Paris Agreement to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.  However, once the community got involved they asked why 2050, why not 2040? And then, if 2040, why not 2030? And what is net zero anyhow?

Mat Woods is the Chief Executive of Destination Queenstown and a passionate advocate for the district. ASE caught up with Mat at Meetings 2023 where we went into how the community became engaged in the ambitious plan for going carbon zero by 2030.