Glentanner ‘not going to go away’
A ‘‘resilient’’ Mackenzie district holiday park near Aoraki/Mt Cook is front-footing the now non-existent international tourism market by developing new offerings for the domestic scene.
‘‘You’ve got to meet the market that you’ve got and you can’t just sit there and expect that who you had is going to come through,’’ said Glentanner Park owner Helen Ivey, who told Stuff that 80 per cent of their business normally comes from the international market.
‘‘We’ve been in business a long time, we started in 1978, so we’ve been through these ups and downs before and while we’ve had a huge up in the last few years, we did have few years of quite low, and we are just trying to be resilient and carry on, we are not going to go away.’’
The Ivey family has run the 45,000 acre Glentanner Station since 1957, diversifying into tourism in 1976 with the establishment of Mount Cook Heli-ski in the Ben Ohau range and later the Glentanner Park Centre, including helicopter and fixed wing scenic flights, cafe, a retail outlet, accommodation and campervan facilities.
Having been closed during lockdown, all aspects of the business were reopened on Thursday alongside a two for one accommodation offer in all its cabins.
‘‘We’re lucky, because we’re Kiwis we can think like our tourists.
‘‘International travellers who are here for two to three weeks basically stay everywhere for one night because they have so much to see whereas Kiwis tend to stay somewhere for three or four nights, or five nights.’’
She said they had already had some good pick up on the offer, particularly for weekends.
Glentanner is also a regular host of school groups from around the country through the Learning and Education Outside the Classroom programme run in Aoraki/Mt Cook.
Primary school pupils will have itineraries including guided walks and a tour of the emergency services building while secondary school students will experience curriculum specific activities, Ivey said.
‘‘That has really been affected this year and any schools that were booked of course couldn’t come.
‘‘A lot of them used to stay at Glentanner so we’re saying to them if they want to come between now and the end of July we will make sure they are the only people in the camp because parents are going to be nervous as they go outside their ‘bubble’.’’ The Helicopter Line, which is based out of the Glentanner Park Centre and works closely with the company, has also opened in level two.
‘‘They can take a maximum of five people as long as they are all from the same bubble, or two lots of two — they are working with the social distancing rules and PPE.’’
Whereas tour groups were previously pre-sold specific packages, The Helicopter Line is now looking to run more tailored trips which may appeal more to the domestic markets, she said.
Together, the companies have also developed a new high country heli-hike product which will launch in July.
‘‘It’s going to be family friendly because I think we are going to have a lot of families who want to go and do something but not spend a lot of money.
‘‘We are going to be offering a really short helicopter flight from the Glentanner base, up onto the first shelf [in the valley] and they will go with a guide, and we’ll tell them about the farming, a little about the glaciology and a bit about what’s in and around Glentanner.’’
The trip will include tea and a scone at an old deer hut before a gentle walk out of the valley, and will cost $650 for six people, she said.