For 17 years, Ziptrek Ecotours and founder Trent Yeo haven't just talked about regenerative tourism in Queenstown, they've led the charge. Now the business is taking another step, becoming a Love Queenstown Impact Partner and formalising its ongoing support for local climate, conservation, and biodiversity initiatives.

Ziptrek has backed Love Queenstown since the community fund launched in 2023, supporting fundraising events, industry planting days, and other initiatives. Becoming an Impact Partner builds on this existing relationship, providing an ongoing commitment to the grassroots environmental work happening across the Whakatipu.

"We love working with Love Queenstown and this step makes our support more direct and ongoing," Trent says. "It's something we can encourage all businesses to be part of. No one can do it individually. Collectively is much better."

Ash Bickley, Love Queenstown Community Fund Coordinator, says the partnership is a natural fit.

"Trent and the team have long been an inspiration in this space, showing what’s possible when a business puts people and place at the heart of everything it does,” she says.

Ziptrek has been putting this philosophy into practice since it opened its ziplining business above Queenstown in 2009, planting more than 6,000 native trees on site and channelling well over $250,000 into groups including Mana Tāhuna, Kiwi Birdlife Park and Sustainable Queenstown through the likes of annual Locals’ Days.

The company was Queenstown's first tourism operator to achieve Net Zero Carbon Business Operations certification, a status it has now held for six consecutive years, backed by a New Zealand Tourism Award for environmental tourism and Trent's own Emerging Leader Award in 2019.

Environmental education is woven through their operations, from the tours themselves to their long-standing relationship with Queenstown Resort College.

For Trent, supporting Love Queenstown is an extension of this work.

Love Queenstown gives businesses and visitors a practical way to connect more deeply with the place and contribute to the community and grassroots environmental projects, should they choose to.

And Trent says many visitors now have a more responsible and ethical approach to travel. They want to get involved and give something back.

“Otherwise, you’re just hitting the sides of the community and doing some fun things for yourself - which is all fine and valid; no one’s criticising that,” he says. “But Queenstown is developing as a place where people can formally, functionally and loudly contribute. And our community also wants to see that.”

He has also seen how powerful those opportunities can be. One social media influencer invited to take part in Ziptrek’s environmental work was “quite overwhelmed with how much she could get engaged in the work on the ground,” he says. “She wasn’t expecting that level of engagement.”

Trent believes every business can find practical ways to make progress along the sustainability path.

“It can cost more to do good business, but it doesn’t have to - especially when you factor in lower running costs and the simplification that often comes with it.”

Ziptrek’s new electric ute ‘Hiko’ is a good example. Charged in town overnight, she heads up the mountain each day to power the course, easing pressure on the treehouse’s off-grid solar system, while reducing the generator use and bottled gas previously needed to fill the gaps. It also requires less servicing: “I don’t need the truck at the service station getting oil changes anymore.” A second EV is already budgeted for this financial year.

Nearly two decades in, Trent has watched sustainability move from the margins of tourism to the mainstream.

"You have to be simultaneously patient and impatient about these things," he says. "The whole idea of sustainable tourism should disappear and just become normal. If you want a brand people can love, expressing yourself through more than making money and employing people is a pretty good way to do it. I am hopeful. I'm also still impatient."

For businesses and visitors alike, he sees Love Queenstown as the easiest and most impactful way to turn that hope into action.

"Love Queenstown is sitting there waiting to be fed," he says."It's a very solid way to ethically give out money without every business having to work out who receives it and whether they're the right organisation. Love Queenstown manages that."

Love Queenstown is a community fund created to protect and restore the local environment by connecting businesses, visitors and residents with grassroots climate, conservation, and biodiversity projects.

Its Impact Partners commit 1% of their net proceeds, or $10,000 or more each year, with contributions pooled to create greater collective impact. 80%of the money raised supports immediate environmental action through annual Impact Grants, while 20% is invested in an endowment fund to provide long-term support for future generations.