NZ finally slips down the ‘best-of’ lists. About time!

Mitre Peak rising from the Milford Sound fjord in New Zealand.

Does the world need yet another of these endless “best-of” lists so beloved by media outlets?

No, the world most certainly does not. You get to the end of these darn things feeling none the wiser about anything in particular, realising as you do that that’s 10 or so minutes of your life that you’ll never get back in exchange for what a couple of editorial hacks came up with in a Zoom meeting.

Unless, one supposes, you happen to be a certain kind of Kiwi who finds a sense of reassurance in the endless rankings of the world’s “best” travel destinations.

In the department of non-news, the recent disclosure that New Zealand has once again topped a listing of the snazziest countries to visit probably deserves a space of its own. New Zealand always seems to top these things.

In the latest, compiled by the Rough Guide website, it figures as the world’s “most beautiful” destination bubbling with “amazing scenery” and — a stunning revelation that may have readers of a certain age reaching for their pacemakers — notable differences “between the mountains and beaches.”

The Bay of Islands, Northland, New Zealand. Picture: iStock

The popular site also makes much of the country’s outdoor activities, more or less echoing the sentiment of the late Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy who described the South Island scenery as one of the most “astounding pieces of land anywhere on God’s earth, and one’s first impulse, standing on a cliff top surveying it all, is simply to burst into spontaneous applause”.

From hiking and biking to kayaking with whales, road-tripping through the mountains to lounging on its beaches, the scenic hits apparently just keep on rolling.

Never mind that the beaches in New Zealand tend to be pretty cold most of the year and hikers have a habit of often getting lost in the bush. Also — let’s just be honest for a moment — after you’ve seen one or two mountains haven’t you seen them all?

What’s the big deal about riding bikes? Especially in or around Auckland or Christchurch, the two cities international visitors arrive in, both of which seem to have rather dire issues with roading in 2024 and no rail system connecting the terminal to the downtowns.

A whale breaches in Kaikora, Canterbury.

I’m joking — sort of. For as long as there have been travel editors with space to colourfully fill, the Kiwis have tended to do so notably well in these ranking exercises that even those of us who enjoy the country up to a point must feel the need for a little more balance. And not just in respect of those surveys making much of those heart-stopping contrasts between the sky-kissed mountains and the azure seas.

At various times in the recent past, New Zealand has variously been named one of the world’s “most tranquil” places to visit, the “best” place to do business, the one with the “most-trusted” political leadership, the “happiest country” and, in a possible nod to the severity of the lockdowns during Covid, the “best policed”.

What can one possibly say? Only, with the greatest possible respect, that if the nation really was the word-beater on all fronts that its editorial adulators would have their consumers believe, why is the net outflow of residents currently at historic levels and the inflow of migrants relatively sluggish?

Once you’ve seen a couple of mountains, haven’t you seen them all? Picture: Alamy

Also, come to think of it, why do the compilers of these travel surveys always assume that people visit countries for the natural sights alone?

Don’t culture, history, restaurants and intellectual activities come into the mix?

And who’s to say such-and-such a destination is more “beautiful” than another? How does one even begin to objectively quantify the visual differences between Australia and New Zealand, or for that matter the land of the sheep and the fabulous destinations in Europe and the Americas? It seems like an editorial task without meaning or end.

Or maybe there is an end.

Shortly before the Rough Guide exercise, The Daily Telegraph in Britain actually did the unthinkable, bumping New Zealand down to second place behind South Africa, after a decade spent atop of the charts.

A harbinger of sensible things to come? Who knows. Now if you’ll excuse me. I need to log on to Instagram and post a few more holiday snaps of my recent visit to world-beating Ireland.

David Cohen is a Wellington journalist and author.