ABSTRACT
Launched in 1984, “Don’t leave town till you’ve seen the country” was an iconic advertising campaign designed to encourage New Zealanders to support domestic tourism. Today, more than 90% of the tourism advertising spend in New Zealand encourages locals to travel offshore, and the percentage of money spent on international versus domestic tourism by New Zealanders continues to increase. This growth in international tourism and its associated negative environmental consequences is exacerbated by overseas travel which is often short-term in duration, and which occurs despite increasing consumer awareness of the issues around sustainability. This chapter explores how a renewed emphasis upon domestic tourism might provide a viable strategy towards supporting degrowth. Two approaches from the marketing literature are explored in terms of their ability to achieve this outcome. First, macro-social marketing is introduced as a systems framework by which international tourism might be demarketed to New Zealanders. Second, the consumer lifestyle of voluntary simplicity is explored to understand what lessons the ethos of this consumption lifestyle might provide in terms of increasing the desirability of domestic tourism.
