Dr Peter Phillips

Peter is a vastly experienced consultant who has worked across a range of sectors with a particular focus on strategic planning, public participation, communications, and monitoring/evaluation. Peter has undertaken extensive research and development in tourism, with individual businesses and with tourism clusters.  Between 1993 and 1998 Peter managed New Zealand’s aid programme for tourism in the Cook Islands.  He has since developed a national strategy based on geotourism for the Cook Islands, which was the first country in the Pacific to sign the Geotourism  Charter.   Peter is a director of Arawai Ltd which operates the waka hourua “Te Aurere” in a tourism venture on the Waitemata Harbour and beyond.  He is a member of the New Zealand Planning Institute and an accredited independent commissioner for Council hearings under the Resource Management Act.

John Panoho

John’s tribal affiliations are Parawhau, Te Uri Roroi, Ngati Whatua and Ngapuhi.  This heritage in part underpins his passionate commitment to the future of Māori participation at all levels of the tourism industry.  Over the last 28 years he has worked steadily to turn the concept of cultural tourism into a business reality.  He has built and run successful travel, transport, and in-bound tourism businesses and has developed unique cultural attractions.  He is currently the director of Navigator Tours, an in-bound operator specialising in Māori experiences for conventions, incentives, and super-luxury clients.  With Peter he also operates leadership programmes for Auckland University Business School, private companies and the public sector based on Maori values through Ko Wai?.

Murray Ellis

Murray brings a range of analytical skills to the team with particular strengths in financial and economic modeling. He provides the principal technical and financial inputs into project assessments (supported in part by his Master of Philosophy in Engineering Economics).  Murray has a wide knowledge of New Zealand, parts of SE Asia, and the Pacific Islands, with the latter informed by three years based in Fiji working for the South Pacific Bureau of Economic Co-operation and a range of overseas aid projects for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.  Murray has evaluated the feasibility of a range of tourism business proposals including an ecolodge, river waka tours, and the Kupe Waka Centre at Doubtless Bay.