Paid parking for tourists mooted
Higher tramping hut fees for tourists are coming and car park charges could follow, to help pay for ballooning tourism on conservation land.
A record 1.75 million international tourists visited New Zealand’s national parks in the past year, with numbers soaring by up to a third at hotspots such as Aoraki/ Mt Cook’s Hooker Valley and Wanaka’s Roys Peak track.
Tourists waited half an hour for a car park at Franz Josef Glacier and queued for 40 minutes for photos at Roys Peak. The Conservation Department had to employ parking attendants at Cape Reinga and spent $155,000 on road management at the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.
Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage is expected to announce this weekend that international tourists will payer higher hut fees for some walks, to help fund tourist infrastructure. Even the country’s nine Great Walks don’t pay their way, costing about $2m more to maintain than they generate in hut fees – and she expected that to change.
Sage rated tourism pressures on conservation land as an 8 out of 10 problem. While she did not believe New Zealand had too many tourists, they needed to be better spread and better managed, and DOC needed to recoup more of the cost of visitor management, she said.
DOC has been upgrading its booking system to allow differential pricing, probably based on an honesty system of walkers entering their street address.
It’s not yet clear where and how the higher fees will apply. Documents show DOC has investigated differential hut fees for both Great Walks and the backcountry hut pass used by many backpackers, which currently costs $122 for a year’s unlimited access.
Sage also signalled more huts would be added to the booking system to help manage over-crowding in other areas, potentially expanding the scope for differential pricing. Documents show DOC has considered adding 116 extra wardenmanaged camps and huts to the booking system, to raise an extra $1.5m a year.
Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis has already announced plans for a border levy, which most conservation advocates support as the easiest option to increase visitor funding for tourism infrastructure.
Forest and Bird advocacy manager Kevin Hackwell said the levy should be high enough to deter budget travellers, to quell New Zealand’s ‘‘mindless model’’ of unbridled tourism growth.
‘‘The industry have got it wrong. They are absolutely at risk of killing the goose that’s laying the golden egg.’’
Tourism Industry Aotearoa boss Chris Roberts was wary of a border levy as it could unfairly tax businesspeople, but supported differential pricing and an overhaul of DOC’s charging system.
Documents show DOC is also considering $10 or $15 car park charges to manage traffic chaos in places such as Punakaiki and Franz Josef Glacier.
Federated Mountain Clubs president Peter Wilson opposed parking charges but said New Zealand needed to find a way to curb unsustainable growth.
‘‘There’s a limit to what we can physically have, and then there’s a limit to what people accept.’’
Punakaiki businessman Patrick Volk dismissed car park charges as ‘‘really stupid’’, as they would leave tourists feeling ripped off.
‘‘There is nothing left on the West Coast except tourism. If we muck it up then we have a huge problem.’’
He called instead for DOC to charge for the Pancake Rocks walk itself. Other tourism operators and conservationists also called for charges for national parks or day walks, but legislation currently prevents charging for access to conservation land and Sage has ruled out a law change.