Waitomo to get $4m in bailout

A Waitomo caving operator will receive

$4 million in rescue funding from the Government, as the first of a $400m fund to keep the tourism industry afloat is dished out.

Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis said yesterday Discover Waitomo, a Tourism Holdings Limited company, was one of the ‘‘strategic tourism assets’’ the Government would help survive, as ‘‘without this support, it may not have been possible to preserve this key asset’’.

The Government would also give

$20.2m to New Zealand’s 21 regional tourism organisations, which would use the cash to support their local industries, Davis said.

However, even with the helping hand there were still a number of roles that could not be saved, Tourism Holdings Ltd chief executive Grant Webster said.

Webster could not confirm how many jobs this would save, with the company announcing in May it was consulting staff over 140 job losses from its Waitomo Caves, Kiwi Experience and group support operations.

The Government has also set up a ‘‘Tourism Futures Taskforce’’ to assess the future of the industry, which will be cochaired by Webster and Rotorua mayor Steve Chadwick.

Discover Waitomo warranted the support as it was a ‘‘world-renowned iconic tourism attraction’’, Davis said, that brought economic, cultural and employment boons for the King Country.

The Government needed to ‘‘act fast’’ to save the operator, and similar urgent decisions would be announced soon. Davis has previously mentioned Kaiko¯ ura whale watching operators as possibly requiring support.

Tourism operators could qualify as a strategic tourism asset if they were nationally or internationally recognised, were a key attraction for New Zealand or a region, if visitors to a region would reduce if the business closed, and if there were ‘‘significant spillover benefits’’ for the business’s region.

Tourism Industry Association chief executive Chris Roberts said the Government was right to protect tourism assets, though ‘‘today’s announcements provide no direct support for the thousands of small and medium enterprises that are the majority of tourism businesses’’.

The association was waiting for further announcements about what the tourism taskforce would do.