Quarantine quandaries as trans-Tasman bubble opens.
New Zealand will lose economically if it does not allow visitors from countries that Australia opens up to, experts say.
At first, only ‘‘the most resilient travellers’’ will be prepared to travel.
Not long after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Australian travellers would be allowed to visit New Zealand quarantine-free, talk began of Australia opening its borders to other nations.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Australian immigration and health authorities were exploring plans to open up to Singapore within months, followed by other nations with low Covid-19 numbers, including Fiji, Vietnam and Thailand as well as countries with higher case numbers such as Japan and South Korea.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says it has looked at places like Singapore, Japan and South Korea among other countries.
‘‘But at this stage we are not in a position to move forward on any of those,’’ he was reported as saying.
In recent days Morrison said experts were also exploring whether vaccinated Australians could travel internationally without undergoing hotel quarantine.
If Australia does open its borders to other countries it poses a dilemma for the New Zealand Government.
Will it keep the bubble open and tolerate the risk of those in Australia who are allowed to enter New Zealand quarantinefree, including New Zealand travellers, potentially being exposed to travellers from higher-risk countries? And even allow in visitors from other countries travelling through Australia?
Or does it shut down the bubble, once again isolating New Zealanders?
Economist Benje Patterson says that if Australia opens its borders to another country it will mean, by default, New Zealand will also need to form a bubble with that country.
At the same time, the New Zealand Government would not want to be at the behest of Australia.
If New Zealand failed to find a way to work with an Australian bubble partner it could result in a ‘‘decoupling’’ of Australia and New Zealand, signalling an end to quarantine-free trans-Tasman travel, Patterson says.
Such a move will not be wellreceived by the New Zealand public who will be expecting more liberties to be extended to them, rather than freedoms taken away, he says.
It will also have ‘‘big ramifications’’ economically and socially.
Australia’s vaccine roll-out initially appeared to be more progressed than New Zealand’s, however, it is now lagging behind, which puts New Zealand in a stronger position, he says.
‘‘Anything that aligns our timelines more with Australia actually raises the prospect of it being workable in the long run.’’
The economic benefits of a trans-Tasman bubble are not weighted heavily in favour of either New Zealand or Australia. The real gains for New Zealand will come from opening up to other countries, Patterson says.
‘‘The net benefit to New Zealand if and when we can open up direct travel is very heavily in New Zealand’s favour.’’
Tourism is the obvious winner, but welcoming back international students and bringing in workers to fill skills shortages will also be valuable, he says.
But New Zealand does not have a great deal of choice when it comes to forming bubbles with countries outside of Australia and the Pacific Islands.
‘‘To have bubbles across a widespread array of nations is going to get very difficult.
‘‘We saw how challenging it was to implement the transTasman bubble.’’
Further quarantine-free travel arrangements will need to be with countries that have a similar eradication strategy to New Zealand and a similar risk profile, he says.
‘‘It’s very unlikely that we would bubble with other countries that don’t have the same strategy.’’
There are not many countries that have a similar profile to New Zealand, but two possible candidates are China and Taiwan, he says.
Last Sunday, China had 10 locally transmitted cases of Covid-19, according to China Daily. Taiwan has no community transmission.
Rene´ de Monchy, chief executive of Crown entity Tourism New Zealand, says preCovid, Australia the United States and China were New Zealand’s biggest markets, making up nearly two-thirds of international tourism value.
Countries like Japan, Singapore and South Korea are also desirable markets for New Zealand to entice tourists from, de Monchy says.
New Zealand will be at a competitive disadvantage if visitors from these markets are able to visit Australia and not New Zealand, he says.
For a lot of travellers, when they travel to this part of the world, they tend to visit both countries.
For example about 40 per cent of Chinese visitors were ‘‘dual destination’’ tourists who visit both countries, he says.
‘‘If they can only go to Australia, the risk is they just skip New Zealand altogether, and we won’t see them return for a number of years if at all.’’
Over the past year Tourism New Zealand has continued to promote New Zealand in Australia, China and the US, so that when borders do open New Zealand is on travellers’ radar, de Monchy says.
‘‘We want people to keep dreaming, even though they may not know when they can travel.’’
New Zealand is a niche destination to travellers in the US and China, representing about 0.25 per cent of their outbound travel, says.
If future bubbles do open, only ‘‘the most resilient travellers’’ will be prepared to travel initially. Others would wait to see how things unfolded first.
Aviation consultant Irene King says New Zealand and Australia should work together to develop relationships with third parties to join the transTasman bubble.
‘‘If we don’t, of course, the danger is then we will end up with all of these one-on-one agreements and that will be an absolute nightmare for airlines to administer,’’ King says.
It would essentially shut down the concept of multi-stop travel, which will have serious implications for Australia and New Zealand because both countries are reliant on multidestination tourists.
‘‘It will undermine the viability of some of our long and skinny routes because they are very contingent on the feed from Australasian traffic.’’