Hospitality, Technology and Queenstown

It makes a lot of sense that there’s an emerging hospo-tech scene in Queenstown.

Hearing how tech companies "wouldn't have worked anywhere else but Queenstown" is compelling enough.

But there's more to it.

There are a few key ingredients that make Queenstown a great place to build a hospo-tech business.

First, Queenstown gets a lot of year-round visitation which enables 7 day per week hospitality demand.

This creates a density of quality hospitality businesses for tech companies to work with.

Being able to run into the owners, operators and leaders of these hospitality businesses in the street makes it easy to keep a finger on the pulse.

Although there is an increasing number of visitors and residents - these businesses aren't sitting idle.

Most of them are trying to offer better experiences, be more productive, develop their teams and build better businesses.

This creates room for technology to play its part.

Whether it's a B2C restaurant booking platform (First Table) sparked from the idea of seeing empty tables early in the night.

Or a B2B management software (Loaded) that came from a hospitality business owner who saw a better way to crunch the numbers.

Or a food safety app (Chomp Digital Food Safety) that simplifies compliance for busy kitchens.

Or a loyalty platform (Kieran Gardiner) so you don't have to carry around different coffee cards and rewards apps.

And there's more coming...

Not only are there more problems to solve but as these alpine hospo-tech businesses succeed, others see the potential and realise they can do it from here too.

This is part of why, together with Peter and Queenstown Lakes District Council, we started Host-tech Queenstown.

It's also aligns with Technology Queenstown Limited and the exciting future that exists to celebrate tech coming from the mountains.

To solve real challenges for local businesses, export these ideas to the world and diversify our local economy at the same time.

Thanks Mountain Club for the chance to share some hospitality tech and industry insights last week and for doing your part in supporting this community.