Tourism businesses looking at trends
Cable Bay Adventure Park’s Richard Ussher says weighing up the unknown is the hardest part of planning post-Covid-19.
‘‘You can listen to three different commentators on the economic situation and get three different answers.
‘‘Until we sort of start to see what the trends are, it’s going to be very hard to make concrete plans.’’
Ussher said the Nelson park reopened officially on Saturday, and while the first day had been ‘‘pretty dead’’, things had picked up yesterday. ‘‘For a nice day in winter it was promising, it certainly shows people were happy to get out and about – so it is a positive from that point of view. ‘‘
Ussher said foreign tourists accounted for about 45 per cent of their business.
He said while the loss of international tourism was a big blow, one advantage the NelsonTasman region had was that products and services were priced more towards the domestic market than the international market. A recently released Infometrics report is estimating foreign tourism is likely to tank over the next 12 months, with a 91 per cent reduction compared to 2019. The report also predicted domestic tourism would decline by 21 per cent on the previous year’s figures.
However, a survey of 1131 adults conducted by Horizon Research in April, stated there was an increased appetite for domestic tourism among Kiwis post-lockdown.
The survey estimated 34 per cent of adults (1.2 million people) intended to take a domestic holiday in the next seven to 12 months – alert level depending.
Of those, there was an estimated 660,000 people who would like to holiday in the NelsonTasman region over that time.
Horizon’s principal Graeme Colman said the potential for visitor numbers for some regions could be higher than before Covid-19. ‘‘We’re hopeful they can use the insights to make the most of the restart – and in each of the coming 12 months. It should help them target potential travellers who most want the holidays they are offering.’’