Community Sustainability
Supporting Our Home Town
Supporting People, Business and Community
For us, sustainable tourism is about more than caring for the natural environment. It is also about supporting the people, businesses and communities that make this part of New Zealand such a special place to live and visit.
Two Rivers is our business, but it is also our home.
When we bought the property in 2024, we didn't simply become accommodation owners in Ohakune. We became part of a small community whose businesses and livelihoods are closely connected - to each other, to tourism and to the landscape around us.
That has increasingly shaped the way we operate Two Rivers.
We believe that when visitors spend money in a small town, the value of that spending can extend well beyond the place where they stay.
Keeping Visitor Spending Local
We don't try to provide everything our guests might need.
Two Rivers doesn't serve evening meals, for example. Instead, guests can follow the riverside walkway into Ohakune, where restaurants and cafés are approximately a 15-minute walk away.
It gives our guests more choice, allows them to experience more of the town and means their evening spending supports other local businesses.
The same principle applies when guests are looking for ski equipment, bike hire, transport or local activities.
There are already people here who do those things extremely well.
Our role is often simply to introduce our guests to them.
We believe we're stronger businesses when we work together.
Local Relationships Behind the Scenes
Some of our most important local relationships are less visible to guests.
Our breakfast platters are prepared for us by Utopia Café in Ohakune. They present them beautifully, while preparing breakfast through an established local café also helps us reduce the amount of perishable food we need to hold ourselves.
The relationship is deliberately designed to work for both businesses.
We purchase as many of our everyday supplies as practical through Ohakune's locally owned and operated New World supermarket and use the local Place Makers wherever practical for building materials.
The native plants being introduced around our riverbanks come from Carina's Native Nursery in nearby Raetihi, where we can source plants suited to local conditions.
We also rely on builders, electricians, plumbers and other tradespeople who live and work within the wider region.
For us, supporting local doesn't mean drawing an arbitrary line on a map. It means thinking about where our spending goes and, wherever practical, working with people and businesses that have a genuine connection to and investment in the communities around us.
Valuing the People Who Make Two Rivers Possible
Community sustainability isn't only about where we purchase things.
It is also about people.
Two Rivers is a very small accommodation business, but we couldn't operate it alone.
The people who help us care for the property and prepare it for our guests are fundamental to the experience we provide. We believe good work should be recognised properly and that the people who contribute to the success of a business should be treated with respect and valued for what they bring to it.
At our scale, those relationships are personal.
We think that's a good thing.
Sustainability Begins at Home
Environmental and community sustainability aren't particularly separate ideas for us.
Two Rivers is where we live as well as where we welcome guests.
Our 33-panel solar system supplies the entire property - our home and the guest accommodation together. Around the rivers, we are gradually replacing invasive and inappropriate vegetation with native planting, much of it sourced locally. Where practical, we purchase locally, work with local tradespeople and encourage our guests to explore the businesses around us.
None of those decisions is especially dramatic on its own.
Together, they reflect the way we want to operate.
Sustainability, for us, isn't a separate programme added to the business. It is a habit of asking whether something could be done a little better - environmentally, socially or economically - and then making changes where they are practical and meaningful.
A Better, Richer, More Economically Viable Town
When we moved to Ohakune, we came with a slightly idealistic belief that a small hospitality business might contribute something positive to the place around it.
Living and working here has made that idea much more practical.
One accommodation business isn't going to transform a town.
Nor should it try.
But we can decide where we buy breakfast. We can choose local suppliers where practical. We can value the people who work alongside us. We can recommend another business rather than trying to capture every part of a visitor's spending ourselves.
And we can encourage our guests to experience Ohakune rather than simply sleep here.
These are small decisions, but made consistently they can help visitor spending travel further through a regional community.
If one day we leave Two Rivers, we know what we would like to have contributed towards:
A better, richer, more economically viable town.
For us, sustainable tourism is therefore not only about reducing what we take from a place.
It is also about making sure that, because we are here, something is given back.