Biology degree to Regenerative Tourism

I’m the Customer Experience Manager at Rotorua Canopy Tours. I’m all things reservations and communications, and I manage the front of house team.

I love Tourism for the people. I work with an amazing team: there's banter and I give my boss slack, we all enjoy what we do and being outdoors. The customers are also amazing - we’re conquering fears, capturing memories and creating experiences with them. We’ve got this thing in the morning with my team where we say “we’re changing lives today guys”, because that’s what we do.

Career wise, I never had Tourism in mind. I left high school, went into landscape design and I did that for a couple of years before travelling overseas. When I came back, I got into a biology degree - studying science and the natural environment. Growing up, my dad worked for DOC and my mum was a PE teacher, so I was always about the outdoors and the environment – this was always a big part of me. And I did childcare whilst studying because I’m people oriented. [Throughout my career] I always kept my eye out for opportunities. When I was front row of a Salmonella Dub concert, I met my 'now boss' and I think he liked my dance moves… I call that my "unofficial interview" because it was my path into Tourism. It now seems like it was meant to be.

Tourism and conservation can go hand-in-hand and Rotorua Canopy Tours is a classic example of that. We are leaders in regenerative tourism. Here we have this amazing cycle: a part of the customer entry fee goes into our conservation fund, which we use to drive pest management. From that, the forest starts to restore itself. We’ve seen birds return that never used to be here and more lush vegetation is beginning to grow. People come to enjoy it because it’s more incredible, the forest then gets better and better again, and more people want to come and see it. It’s a beautiful cycle that just continues to evolve. Also, we work very closely with DOC. We created our course to have very minimal impact on the forest and, in doing so, we’ve enabled people to see how special our forests are and how important it is to protect these environments. The educational element is something people take away and it’s key to our business.

It’s quite hard to say because there’s a number of different facets to it – oh, maybe that is my favourite part! The fact that I am in my office one moment having a good yarn and laugh with a customer and another time I’m enjoying the outside. There's so much variety. It’s all about the connection with people too – I bring smiles to people’s faces. So, it’s the human connection but also the forest that I get to enjoy.

There’s so much cool stuff that goes on. Here in this forest, I can put a grub in my hand and have a beautiful native bird come and take it off my hand - when we never used to have birds here - I mean that’s incredible. I’m a part of a journey that’s not only important to Rotorua but to New Zealand and I’m really proud to be a part of the bigger picture. TripAdvisor have also just voted us the number one nature experience in the world, which is massive.

I didn’t think of Tourism as a career path, now I realise there’s so much you can do. If you want to get into Tourism – it might not be your forever job – but what I will tell you is you will meet amazing people, you will have the opportunity to do many amazing activities and things, it’s very positive and you’ll love it no matter what.