Mat Woods
on regenerating tourism and rethinking growth
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“Manaaki whenua, manaaki tangata, haere whakamua — care for the land, care for the people, go forward.” For Mat Woods, these aren’t just words — they’re a roadmap for the future.
Mat doesn’t see sustainability as a finish line. He sees it as a responsibility: not just to sustain what’s left, but to regenerate what’s been lost. “Sustainability isn’t good enough. To sustain is to maintain — but is that really enough now? We need to give back more than we take,” he says.
As Chief Executive of Destination Queenstown and Lake Wānaka Tourism, Mat is leading a bold shift: from growth at any cost, to growth that nourishes people, culture, land, and ecosystems. His journey into regenerative thinking sparked from something as simple — and as powerful — as a coffee cup. Working at Cardrona, a small idea to eliminate single-use cups snowballed into a cultural shift, influencing staff and guests alike to rethink their everyday habits. “If we could influence one mountain, what else could we influence?” he wondered.
Today, Mat challenges the tourism industry to move beyond maintaining the status quo. He knows the shift isn’t easy — it requires bravery, data, and a new mindset. Good data is still a major gap, he notes, but without it, we can’t measure true progress. And when it comes to growth, Mat is clear: “Growth isn’t a dirty word. Greed is.” By focusing on longer stays, higher yield, and reducing leakage, tourism can thrive without overwhelming the land it depends on.
Driving meaningful conversations about change, Mat starts with what matters to people: “If you open by showing how to save money and grow profits, you’ve got their attention. Then you add, ‘By the way, it’s good for the planet.’”
Aotearoa’s real superpower, Mat believes, lies in its people. With a spirit of innovation, resilience, and early adoption running deep in the national DNA, New Zealand has everything it needs to lead the way. “We love being first — from women’s suffrage to going nuclear-free. Now, let’s be first in regenerative tourism.”
Read Mat’s insights in this edition of Blooming Sustainability and be inspired to not just sustain, but to regenerate — for people, for place, and for the generations yet to come.
BLOOMING Sustainability Questionnaire
Name: Mat Woods
Company & Title: Chief Executive Destination Queenstown and Lake Wānaka Tourism
Website & LinkedIn Profile:
* Guiding Values | Kaupapa
A quote, personal motto or whakataukī that reflects your vision:
Manaaki whenua, manaaki tangata, Haere whakamua. Care for the land, care for the people, go forward.
If you could mentor a rising change-maker in Aotearoa, what advice would you share?
Stay strong, be brave and trust yourself. It’s ok to challenge the norm. It would be totally boring if we all agreed all the time. The world needs people who think differently to everyone else, to solve the big problems and show what can be accomplished.
* Leading Change | Arataki
A key moment in your journey that shaped your path:
It all starts with coffee. While I was working at Cardrona the food & beverage team came to me with the idea to remove all single use coffee cups and only serve in crockery or keep cups. A simple idea that made sense for several reasons. Firstly, financially it meant we were no longer purchasing single use cups or spending money to dispose of them. Secondly, the environment was better off as we were no longer producing single use cups, transporting them from manufacturer to the mountain, and ultimately saving waste from landfill.
What happened next surprised me. By removing the need for single use cups - for both staff and guests - on the mountain we started to create behaviour change. Many people continued to use keep-cups in their daily lives or decided to just stop and enjoy that coffee in their café of choice.
What surprised me even more in the following years was how Cardona’s F&B team continued to push ahead with bold ideas. They removed all PET plastic bottles, including selling bottled water, and they chose only to stock products that could be recycled or composted on the mountain. All customer-facing rubbish bins were also removed.
This was that light bulb moment for me. How do we use tourism for good? If we could influence all the skiers on one mountain, how could we influence even more people to adopt sustainable practices, biodiversity and climate change.
What’s the main challenge you face in driving sustainability within your sector?
Sustainability isn’t good enough. To sustain something is to maintain it, is that what we want to do? Or is it too late?
Have we already depleted many precious resources and had an impact on biodiversity? If so, maintaining it is no longer an option. We need to look at a regenerative model where we give back more than we take across four wellbeing pillars: Economically, Socially, Culturally and Environmentally.
It’s a big step to jump from being sustainable, to becoming regenerative, and taking an entire industry on the journey isn’t something we take lightly. However, Covid gave the tourism industry that opportunity to stop and pause (not by choice) and consider what it would feel like if people stopped coming to visit. Of course, we want people to still come and visit, but we want to ensure we don’t damage the planet at the same time.
An area you need more support with:
Data. Right now, the tourism industry has very poor data. We had better data sets before Covid. It’s extremely hard to show improvements or even know if you are making a positive or negative improvement without good data.
We also need to discuss measures of growth. Growth isn’t a dirty word, greed is. It is important that we have a profitable sector if we want to continue to invest in sustainable practices, biodiversity, and climate change.
You can grow profits without having to grow visitation. Increasing things like length of stay, yield, and expenditure, and decreasing economic leakage all leads to economic growth. Sometimes less is more.
Your best approach for engaging stakeholders in meaningful dialogue about ESG:
Start with the economic benefits. If you lead a conversation with, “I can show you how to save X amount of money and increase your bottom line by Y”, it’s caught your attention. Then you add, “By the way, it’s good for the planet.”
Take for example decarbonisation. This is such a big topic that most organisations don’t know where to start. If you rephrase it: “Do you want to know how to save money through electrification?”, it’s got you interested and you want to know more.
I think we really need to de-myth the idea that going green costs you more and that you have to give up some form of comfort and convenience. That’s simply not true.
What do you think is Aotearoa’s superpower in creating a sustainable future?
Our superpower is our people. We are a bunch of earlier adopters with a can-do attitude. We love to be the first -whether it’s women’s suffrage, splitting the atom, conquering Mount Everest or going nuclear free. We already have a highly renewable electricity grid and expensive imports of fossil fuels. We have already reached the tipping point where it is now cheaper for both commercial and residual customers to electricity their businesses or households. We are small enough to quickly show this transition globally whilst being innovative to lead in green tech and renewable energy. Tourism is the shopfront for New Zealand, showing the world our innovations that we can export.
* Surfing the Green Wave | Kakariki
Books, podcasts, courses or other resources that profoundly shaped your approach to sustainability:
Too many to list. It’s constant. Be present. Be open. Listen, Listen, Learn. We are fortunate to have some amazing experts in the areas of sustainability, biodiversity and climate change living in the Queenstown Lakes district who are only too willing to share a cuppa and their incredible knowledge with you. Such as Dr Jim Salinger, who was New Zealander of the year in 2024 and was a contributor to the IPCC team awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for their work on climate change.
Events in Aotearoa or globally that you think are must-attend:
It would be remiss of me not to mention two local events here in the Queenstown Lakes district that are helping communities take practical steps towards environmental sustainability and reducing emissions and.
Electrify Queenstown from 26 – 28 May 2025 is a three day event is designed to help businesses and households explore practical ways to save money, become more energy efficient, and decarbonise. And another event close to home is the WAO Summit in Wānaka this October, which aims to inspire communities to collaborate on climate action, community resilience, and regenerative living.
It’s also important to think bigger. There are events that you can attend that make a global difference. Find a way to go to Conference of the Parties (COP) and then find a way to speak at COP. It’s too easy to say that nothing is ever achieved at COP, but what have you done to change that and really make a difference?
A sustainable initiative or project in Aotearoa that deserves more attention:
Again, it would be remiss of me to not mention the ambitious keystone project from Queenstown Lakes Destination Management plan “Travel to a thriving future “ which is Project 9 – The visitor economy in the Queenstown Lakes reaches carbon zero by 2030.
I also think the nationwide project of Predator Free 2050 is an awesome initiative that we need everyone to rally around and get behind.
If your work could plant one seed of change for the future, what would it be?
The transformative power of travel. Travel opens our hearts and minds to new ideas. New Zealand has the opportunity to lead regenerative tourism and show the world what is truly possible. It’s this transformative power that enables behaviour change.
The leader(s) you endorse for a future edition of Blooming Sustainability:
* One actionable takeaway for our readers to make a change today for a brighter tomorrow:
This really goes back to my first point. Knowing what you now know, and what difference can you make?
The enormity of where to start can seem overwhelming at first when it comes to sustainability, biodiversity and climate change. So start with the sphere of control. What can you actually control? Maybe it’s as simple as never using a single use coffee cup again. Then move out to the next sphere which is influence - the things you can affect but not directly control. This might be at work, within your community, or with Government policy. And then the third sphere is concern - the things you care about but can’t necessarily influence directly.
“Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try” - JFK