Canterbury & West Coast Regional Events Fund

The $47.75 million Regional Events Fund is designed to stimulate domestic tourism and travel between regions through holding events. This is intended to support the tourism and events sector and replace some of the spend from international tourists as a result of COVID-19.

The fund is available to the nine International Marketing Alliance (IMA) groupings of the Regional Tourism Organisations (RTO’s). The Canterbury & West Coast IMA (Christchurch, Timaru, Mackenzie, Hurunui, West Coast and Kaikōura) have been allocated $7 million over a 2-4-year timeframe.

The $7 million in funding has been allocated to each RTO in the Canterbury and West Coast IMA based on the percentage of international visitor spend in each region. The split of the funding was agreed by a Regional Events Investment Panel, a Panel established to co-create a Regional Investment Plan for dispersal of the funding and to manage and monitor event investments in each region. The Panel consists of a representative from each of the RTO’s.

The Investment Plan for the Canterbury & West Coast Regional Events Fund aims to develop and grow a focused portfolio of events that attracts visitors throughout the year, expresses the spirit of the region and its people and leaves a positive legacy for its community. It is also key opportunity to enhance regional collaboration through events, as well as tourism.

The goals of each region will be supported through representation on the Events Investment Panel with a collaborative approach to event programming, event leverage and event development opportunities.

Key focus areas of the Regional Investment Plan include:

• Capability building to ensure the events invested are set up to successfully attract visitors and deliver an increased contribution to the regional economies
• Showcase the region and encourage collaboration on shared event themes and regional strengths
• Identify synergies and intra-regional leverage opportunities with new or existing events, enhancing collaborative programming of events across the region

The success of the Investment Plan will be measured against three main outcome areas:

1. Visitation - attract visitors to the region by the events
2. Profile - enhance the regional profile through events
3. Legacy - generate legacy benefits for the region from the events

The Regional Events Fund covers the large and diverse geographical region of Canterbury and the West Coast. The event landscape within each region varies significantly based on population size, venues and event infrastructure, local capability, capacity and the current annual calendar of events.

Given this context, each RTO will be responsible for administering and managing the allocation of funding for events in their region. The process to access funding differs between regions, further details can be provided directly from the regional contacts. The key priority of investing in events to drive visitation and bring measurable economic benefit is the same for all regions.