Tourist who felt ‘blatantly misled’ by a New Zealand visitors guide makes formal complaint

AN AUSTRALIAN tourist has made a formal complaint about a New Zealand visitors guide, claiming it “misled” him about the seaside town.

Tourist who felt ‘blatantly misled’ by a New Zealand visitors guide makes formal complaint.

EVERYBODY knows you’re not meant to believe everything you read in glossy brochures and advertisements, right? Not this disgruntled tourist who has taken a visitors brochure far too seriously.

A tourist visiting the seaside town in Picton, New Zealand, has made a formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about a Visit Picton tourist guide, claiming he and his friends were “blatantly misled and left disappointed” about the trip.

The complaint was made by a Brisbane man named Peter Chapman and took aim at statements made about Picton’s weather, water quality, tourist attractions and popularity amongst New Zealanders.

The ASA did not agree and the complaint was not upheld.

Mr Chapman, who said he is an “avid old ship enthusiast”, was most perturbed about the claims made in relation to a popular tourist attraction, the Edwin Fox ship.

The guide refers to the Edwin Fox as “the world’s oldest merchant ship” but Mr Chapman said this was “blatantly untrue” because it was not a ship.

“The Edwin Fox is simply the hulk/hull of a wooden sailing vessel that has been partially cut

up and altered and is now ‘preserved’ under a tin roof,” he wrote.

“The advertising is not fair trading nor is it socially responsible to consumers who pay money to see a ship but end up seeing a dilapidated hulk.”

But the ASA disagreed, noting that the Edwin Fox has been recognised as a ship by the World Ship Trust.

He then took aim at Picton’s Queen Charlotte Track, which is in fact 71km long and not 70km as quoted in the guide.

The Visit Picton guide claimed Picton’s Queen Charlotte Track was 70km, but apparently it is 71km.

Mr Chapman also claimed it was misleading to say Picton is fast becoming “a firm favourite with New Zealanders” and has “some of the best weather in New Zealand” and “New Zealand’s most beautiful water environment”.

“Where are the substantiations to prove the [‘firm favourite’ claim],” he asked.

“MBIE [Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment] visitor spend statistics suggest otherwise.”

The ASA did agree that these descriptions of Picton contained a level of hyperbole, but it said it did not reach the threshold required to be regarded as misleading.

The only claim the guide’s authors agreed to change as a result of the complaint was the sentence about Mt Tapuaenuku, to describe it as “one of” Edmund Hillary’s first peaks, rather than “Sir Edmund Hilary’s first peak”.

The ASA noted this change but concluded it was “unanimous” in its view that the tourist guide was not likely to mislead or deceive consumers.