Walking and Cycling on the Auckland Harbour Bridge

Auckland is our gateway to 100% Pure NZ. 70% of tourists enter Godzone via the City of Sails but spend only two nights here – the day they arrive and the day they leave for the smell of sulphur and further afield.

So what’s all this cycling talk about– it’s not as if the penny farthing was invented yesterday but it sure is getting more air time. We are building cycleways the length of the country – that’s where we seem to invest most of our tourism $$$’s.

Here at HOTC we think marrying the commuter and health benefits of cycling in Akld beside our clean green brand has some real merit.  The latest proposal to cling a cycleway onto the Harbour bridge clip ons is inspirational.

So, we’ve been supporting the Pathways Steering Group developing their plans thru a maze of transport engineers and local and central government politicians and their battalions of officers. The boring technical stuff is now all agreed on and we get the growing sense that it is now a real possibility. The plans look great and come with a great lighting show that highlights the bridge across our harbour.

Sure there are some commuter benefits but for us the real win is the tourism bonanza. In San Francisco more than 80% of their international tourists walk the Golden Gate bridge – in fact they have just had to double the size of the bridge bus park and bike hire facilities.

This is a project whose train is running – fast. Take 5 minutes and check out www.getacross.org.nz and tell us what you think.

Download our Insiders guide to Downtown Auckland

We are pleased to announce that our Insiders Guide is now available for downloading in ebook, ipad, iphone and android formatting here...

From late August the guide will be distributed as a hard copy booklet via buses, hotels, rental cars, i-SITES and key visitor retail locations. Based on our extensive and on-going consultation we know that there will be no other guide like it with such extensive content on the downtown city area and with such high quality production values and design.

More information on the Insiders Guide to Downtown Auckland

We see our role over the period of the World Cup, to ensure that international and domestic visitors to the tournament and Auckland central city get to experience as much of what the inner city has to offer as possible to guarantee a memorable stay in Auckland for the visitors and a memorable economic outcome for our businesses.

To meet that goal we have produced an Insider’s Guide. We acknowledge that the best of downtown Auckland can often be hard to find and 'off the beaten track' so our guide is based around making the CBD easy to navigate and definitely much more than just Queen Street – or Queens Wharf. We have divided the central city into 6 distinct 'neighbourhoods', together with the great businesses that are in these areas. The information in the guide is also presented from the perspective of a ‘local' or an 'insider', because often the best things that you experience in an unfamiliar city are those things that are recommended to you by someone who lives there and knows their way around.