The areas of tourism planning and strategy are frequently at the focus of academic enquiry; however, the implementation of the planning results is not. The small number of existing studies suggests that many difficulties associated with plan or strategy implementation in tourism are related to stakeholders, their interrelationships and behaviour. They include rivalry/ competition between actors, individuals or organisations, the stability of stakeholder relationships, the distribution of information and, accordingly, communication gaps and feared or perceived loss of autonomy in cooperative structures. Dislikes between individuals that may result in altered involvement or performance of an organisation were found to be prevalent at the local and community levels. Other known challenges in the implementation of plans include cost and time constraints as well as red tape. This study aims to reduce the knowledge gap related to plan or strategy implementation in tourism by investigating stakeholder involvement and relationships in implementation processes. Taking a network approach, it investigates stakeholder interaction and collaboration in the implementation of the current national tourism strategy, the New Zealand Tourism Strategy (NZTS) 2015.