As visitor development manager for Hutt City, international relations falls with me. When I first started I had visions of international relations being a series of councillor delegations to far flung cities with little interest in anything more than the travel and a personal cultural experience and certainly no tangible benefit to the city. Well in reality there was a bit of that, but we have refocused what sister cities means to Hutt City and we have become much more strategic in how we manage sister city relationships.
Do you want sister city relationships?
Firstly we had to decide what we wanted to do with sister cities. Hutt City has four sister city relationships of varying types: Tempe, AZ, USA; Minoh, Japan; Taizhou and Xi'an, China. One of these relationships was generating tangible benefits to the city in terms of culture and paying visitors coming to Hutt City. The decision was made that Hutt City would be proactive with the cities generating economic benefit to the city and responsive to those that weren't.
Another mind shift was to have future international relations (not sister city relations) with cities of strategic benefit rather than random darts at a globe.
Who pays?
A culture and expectation of the host city paying for everything was of little benefit to us when visiting delegations are often quite large. Now we insist on paying our own way when travelling and they do the same when visiting.
Throughout the year we receive several delegations from one off cities. Previously we used to buy them lunch and give them a presentation on how our city is managed. We still buy them lunch but now we charge them for the presentation which includes lunch.
Who travels?
The Mayor should always travel even if it's just for the first day or two. The power of the Mayor, particularly in Asian cultures, can't be overstated. Travelling with the Mayor we might have the CEO and one manager.
Other than that it is only businesses who travel. We invite businesses and schools to come on what we now term 'business missions'. These businesses pay their own way.
What happens on the Business Missions?
Yes we still go and visit a temple and get a bit of cultural grounding before launching into business but ultimately our focus is to ensure our businesses get the most from their mission.
Prior to travel we coordinate with the overseas Chambers of Commerce to set up appointment streams with business contacts that will help our businesses meet the objectives of their mission.
What benefits have we seen?
- we still get the cultural experience and tolerance which are the underpinning values of sister cities
- schools are receiving fee paying foreign students
- businesses have developed export and import avenues
- one new business has been developed specifically to cater for visitors from one market
- currently sourcing an agent in Hutt City for a Chinese exporter
- lots of ideas for development in our city
Our total budget for international relations has been cut by 40% and the increased benefits are enormous. I would really like to hear from other cities working their way through managing their international relations. I would also be happy to talk in more detail about what we have achieved.
David Hancock is the visitor development manager for Hutt City, Wellington, New Zealand and would be delighted to receive comments on this or any other topic.
http://www.huttvalleynz.com/
http://www.facebook.com/HuttCity.Wellington
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