Our tourism industry is now officially our number one top export earner.

It's nudged dairy out of the way, and is worth around $12.17 billion a year. That accounts for 17.4 percent of our exports - it's just 0.2 percent more than dairy, but it's still our number one export earner. Tourism is our thing.

The analysis by ASB shows the number of visitors to New Zealand has increased by one million in the past six years. One million.

And some of the contributing factors - The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films, the 2011 Rugby World Cup, and the Cricket World Cup two years ago. They all bring in the numbers, or serve as a marketing for the country

So how are we meeting that need? And are we meeting that need? Well, no says the ASB.

Instead, it's put quite a lot of pressure on resources and we're hiking prices instead.

And ASB says it has anecdotal evidence that some visitors are now looking at other destinations.

Too expensive, too greedy. We're charging too much. And largely that's because we don't have the infrastructure.

I've talked about this before. We are so short of hotels and so short of the top-class hotels that international tourists want, and we're just not building fast enough, or in the right places.

Look at the Lions tour. Look at the price-hiking with that. And that's because we can't accommodate everyone, so some are cashing in.

There's a need for more hotels all over the country -- not just in our main cities, but also in places like Tekapo, Taupo, further south in areas such as Fiordland. But we get a bit prickly about constructing hotels in areas considered to be of great natural beauty.

Remember the mono-rail that the Government blocked in Fiordland? I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was one of our greatest opportunities to develop a world-class tourism experience -- built sensitively and carefully, and removing the need to speed hours on a bus to experience Fiordland.

No, it was blocked.

And time is precious when you're a tourist. Look at the situation in Queenstown, and I've talked about this before too.

You arrive the airport and immediately as you leave you sit in a traffic jam for ages. And ages. Tiny roads, single roundabouts, it's a disaster.

Just like Auckland where there is no light rail to the airport and according to the airport, won't be for some 30 years.

Find me a brilliant functioning city where you have to get in a car or a bus to get to the airport. You won't find one.

If this government really wants to position itself as the government of infrastructure, it needs to move fast on this.

You can't cash in and welcome millions of people here, and not provide the support those tourists need.

The Government has bent over to accommodate dairy, it needs to the do the same to ensure tourists get the ultimate experience here too.