Fee increases irk bar owner
A Fiordland businessman believes it is time the Southland District Council takes a closer look at its own costs as those in the hospitality sector brace for an increase in alcohol licensing fees.
Te Anau’s Ranch Bar and Grill owner Dan Anderson feels the council system is broken and he is fed up with increasing costs.
Instead of the council continuing to ask businesses and ratepayers to fork out with more money, Anderson believed it was time the council looked internally to try to find ways to operate more prudently. He went as far as asking if it was time to bring the Southland, Gore and Invercargill councils together to form one council in an attempt to cut administration costs.
Anderson’s comments have come on the back of the Southland District Council’s proposal to increase its alcohol licensing fees.
Hospitality NZ Southland branch president Graham Hawkes said an off-licence business would face a 57 per cent jump in annual licensing fees under a new council proposal.
Hawkes described the proposal as ‘‘extortionate’’ for an industry that was ‘‘already on its knees’’ on the back of Covid-19.
The council wants to revoke its current 30 per cent discount on annual government-set fees, increase all eligible alcohol licensing fees by 10 per cent annually in 2021/22 and 2022/23, and 5 per cent annually for the three years after that.
Currently, a medium cost/risk category premises pays $710 to apply for a licence and a $550 annual fee.
Under the council’s proposal, the same premises would pay $1144 to apply and $886 annually, by 2025/2026.
‘‘Kicking people when they are down is not the Southland way of doing things. These increases could be the last straw for some businesses,’’ Hawkes said.
However, mayor Gary Tong said the fees had been subsidised for years and it could not continue.
‘‘If they are saying it is extortion, it is central government they need to front with that,’’ Tong said.
People in the hospitality industry knew the fees were subsidised [by the council discount], he said.
When the Southland District Council last reviewed its alcohol bylaw in 2015, the government-set annual fees were discounted 30 per cent, a discount which was only viable for three years.
A financial reserve for the council’s business unit has now been depleted and, at a full council meeting last month, a majority of councillors agreed to publicly consult on a rise.
Hawkes questioned where those reserves had gone. Tong said the reserve paid for costs, investigations and legal advice costs associated with administering the fees.
‘‘The cloth has been cut very, very finely and we can no longer sustain it,’’ he said.
Public submissions on the draft policy have now closed but councillors will hear submissions at a meeting on April 27.
Great South predicts about 1000 workers have left the Fiordland region since the Covid-19 pandemic struck and New Zealand borders closed.
That has left many businesses struggling to recruit hospitality staff and wondering how they will get enough to operate during the 2021-22 summer season.
Daniel Anderson, of The Ranch Bar and Grill, said he wished there was a magic bullet that could solve his search for staff.
He is three people short in his restaurant now but he will need at least a dozen more staff by December.
He has advertised on social media, on job seeker sites and in Southland and Central Otago but he is having little luck in finding the right candidates.
‘‘Trying to find people that want to work, or people that we can put through their duty manager’s licence, or even just finding people that have a driver’s licence would be really helpful because we still have to run the courtesy coach,’’ he said.
‘‘We are running the business as leanly as we can but we still need a minimum number to have the place open.’’
He predicts some of the bigger hotels in Te Anau will need about 70 staff when the next summer season begins.
It was likely some borders would still be closed and there would be no overseas workers in the country on holiday on working visas, who often took on hospitality jobs, he said.
Milford Sound Lodge and Fiordland Outdoors Co. general manager Christine Wallace said the Covid-19 pandemic had created a perfect storm for businesses in Fiordland.
Finding skilled staff had always been hard but not having foreign nationals to employ was making the problem even worse, she said.
‘‘Businesses have contracted to cope with the lack of tourists, and now they have to slowly start ramping up again and they can’t get staff, and there is no access to migrant workers,’’ she said.
‘‘I wouldn’t like to guess how many we are short but I know that with chefs we are about a quarter down on what we need, from my experience. People with a hospitality background are very hard to find and at this point in time it is quite cumbersome to take on someone and skill them up.’’
Finding staff to work at Milford Sound during summer would be even more difficult, although she was unsure yet how many she would need.
‘‘It is very hard to get Kiwis to go there and live in a remote environment, away from their friends and family.
‘‘Overseas workers used to relish that experience but now there are none of them here.’’
Real Journeys general manager Paul Norris said that at the moment the company had only a small number of roles it was recruiting for in Fiordland and it had noticed fewer applicants than previously. ‘‘Some of our seasonal contracts have been extended to cater to the domestic market.
‘‘For example, we are running more of our two-night Doubtful Sound overnight cruises through winter.’’
It currently employed about 250 staff and about half of those were in the Fiordland region.
‘‘We anticipate that recruitment may be an issue in Fiordland when we start planning for next summer, especially in some of our more specialist roles.’’
Great South general manager for tourism and events Bobbi Brown said that while Te Anau was not alone in having a labour shortage and places such as Queenstown were also affected, it was a little bit harder to deal with in more isolated areas.
Many businesses were waiting to see what impact the trans-Tasman bubble would have on trade before they started planning for summer and working out how many staff they would need.
Great South will survey companies in about six weeks to see how many workers are needed in the area and in what specific areas.
‘‘Foreign workers have all gone home and a lot of tourism-related businesses relied on them,’’ Brown said.
‘‘Also there is not a high number of people that are unemployed and looking for jobs.
‘‘So, that makes it pretty challenging to find staff.’’