Local bodies are being encouraged to cash in on the booming tourism industry.

Tourism Industry Aotearoa's Local Government Manifesto states councils could be reaping even greater benefits from both international and domestic travellers.

The manifesto states tourism's an $82 million a day industry, and only a fraction of that spending occurs in tourism-specific places.

Chief Executive Chris Roberts said any town can benefit from the further projected growth, if it highlights what's unique about its area.

"Identify what's unique about their area. Look after and invest in the quality of their region and why a visitor would want to come and see you. Councils who get on top of what their value is as a destination, they're only going to see tourism grow."

Mr Roberts said travellers turn to the internet to find the hot places to go and warns bad news spreads quickly online.

"With social media, the customer is very quick to rate everything so it's very important that a region, as much as any other individual business, needs to be tracking how it's getting rated by the visitor."

He adds checking the travel infrastructure is within towns and cities is also an important issue to monitor.

Mr Roberts said councils should also be looking at what events they have planned for the year, and the best way to promote those events.