Friendliness in short supply

The shop assistant looked straight past me. ‘‘Happy just looking?’’ ’she muttered, not even making eye contact. ‘‘Well, actually no,’’ I thought, ‘‘I actually want to pay exorbitant amounts of money for your very ordinary clothes but seeing you can’t even be bothered looking at me, I won’t.’’

For someone on holiday I’d actually made a giant effort to dress respectably, even doing my hair and makeup. But what I’d clearly forgotten to do was spray myself with the smell of money to ensure I got some genuine attention.

I’m not mad, I’m just sad.

I’ve been holidaying in some of New Zealand’s tourist towns. But it doesn’t feel like New Zealand and it certainly doesn’t feel like our kind of hospitality.

At a nearby restaurant, the barman is not so much snooty, he’s just focused on being super cool.

When I get his attention, I get the feeling I should be grateful for the megabuck cocktails he is dishing out in glasses filled with giant ice cubes and not much else.

The food’s the same: delicious, but the minimal amount on the plate reminds me of that tragically, hilarious fashion of nouveau cuisine back in the 1980s.

They’ll still sting you for 50 bucks though and give you a long descriptor of the artisanal, natural, hand-selected, maybe even foraged, ingredients.

This does not feel like my New Zealand. And it makes me wonder how we were treating international visitors before lockdown. I’m starting to feel embarrassed as a New Zealander.

Perhaps they’ve put the prices up in anticipation of all the high-spending tourists everyone keeps talking about focusing on.

It’s not even just the high prices, it’s the lack of Kiwi culture. The way we do things here.

Visitors are attracted to New Zealand because of our beautiful landscape, but when they leave they used to overwhelmingly comment on the friendly Kiwi manner. I wonder if that’s still the case? I’ve experienced more friendliness from buskers in New York than I have in the past week in my own country.

In a few days we’ll be welcoming our first lot of international visitors to New Zealand, after a long and stressful time for the tourism and hospitality industries. I suspect the first wave will be families rushing to reunite with their loved ones. But the second will be a wave of Australians dying for a change of scene.

In fact, Tourism New Zealand estimates 800,000 Australians will visit New Zealand in the next six months which runs right into our ski season.

I’d like to make a plea to those people working in tourist towns to remember that you are part of a country known for its hospitality. Every last one of you: from the dairy, to the clothing store to the cafe, has a role to play in being hospitable.

So, when our Aussie neighbours arrive, how about greeting them like long-lost friends and delivering them the same kind of hospitality we would if we were inviting our cousins into our homes? Let’s not forget our basic values.

As I drove away from my holiday destination, I almost felt like I’d visited another country, it had felt so different.

Then we stopped in a non-tourist town. A local walking down the main street with a piglet stopped to chat. He seemed like he had all the time in the world to talk about anything from choosing the piglet’s name to how they had all survived during lockdown by sharing garden produce and homekill with the community.

It felt very Kiwi. It felt like I was home again.