Milford set to reach 1m tourists

Visitor numbers to Milford Sound are set to exceed 1 million people in 2019 and infrastructure issues must be addressed, Venture Southland warns.

A Venture Southland tourism report says Milford Sound continues to experience significant growth, and associated infrastructure challenges, with a 21 per cent increase in visitors over 2016 and a further 16 per cent growth forecast for the year ahead.

‘‘2017 visitor numbers [to Milford Sound] are expected to reach 875,000 and exceed 1 million by 2019 - up from 457,000 in 2012.’’

Venture senior staffer Steve Canny said the rest of Southland was cashing in on Milford’s popularity.

There had been a dramatic increase in the number of visitors travelling from Milford Sound to other parts of Southland in the last couple of years.

‘‘A lot of them are travelling via Queenstown to Milford Sound and coming back through Southland.’’

The escalating numbers of visitors to Milford resulted in increased traffic and congestion.

There had been a 30 per cent increase in vehicles on Milford Rd from 2015 to 2016 which posed problems of its own, Canny said.

The large increase in vehicle numbers resulted in challenges that needed to be addressed in terms of infrastructure, such as car parking and toilets.

‘‘There’s evidence in the last couple of years that people are having less than satisfactory experiences there, particularly at destinations on the road to Milford,’’ Canny said.

There were bigger volumes of vehicles at the sites along the way to Milford and limited car parking space at Milford, he said.

‘‘People are saying they thought they arrived in plenty of time to get on the boat but had to walk 30 minutes to get to the terminal.’’

Like any destination, growth needed to be anticipated ahead of time and investment made in infrastructure so congestion could be dealt with, he said.

‘‘If you fail to do that you start getting less than favourable feedback fom travellers and that’s not helpful if you are promoting New Zealand.’’

Internationally, Milford Sound was the most recognisable location within New Zealand and it needed to be managed correctly, he said.

‘‘If you fail to address matters like congestion you can easily erode the potential of such destinations.’’

‘‘The reality is that Southland doesn’t want to destroy the goose that lays the golden egg.’’

It was up to Central Government, local authorities and private enterprise to address the issues, he said.

Southland District Council community partnership leader Simon Moran, who is working on the Milford Opportunities Project, said one of its projects would be infrastructure at Milford.

The project, consisting of various agencies and tourism stakeholders, was set up to manage the growing popularity of Milford Sound.

The pressure points at Milford were being looked at and decisions would be made on what needed to be done, Moran said.

‘‘It’s something we are going to have to deal with and that’s recognised by all of the groups that have anything to do with Milford.’’

‘‘We are in the process of finalising things with MBIE and when we have that sorted in the next couple of months we will get things under way,’’ he said.