Tourism needs a kickstart
New Zealand’s historically vaunted international tourism industry is on the ropes and National’s proposed border shake-up to allow some travellers shorter quarantine periods won’t save it by itself. But it could be the beginning of its revival, offering something concrete to the industry while we wait for the emergence of a vaccine.
It also comes just days after Air New Zealand boss Greg Foran called out this country’s elimination strategy as ‘‘probably not sustainable’’.
The conversation is starting to expand beyond just how we get rid of Covid-19 and stay rid of it, to how we learn to live with it in the meantime.
Quite apart from tourists, there is a dire need for seasonal workers. The border cannot stay so tightly closed indefinitely.
National’s border proposals are scant on details and raise a number of questions around safety and fairness, especially in allowing private providers to offer isolation services.
For example, will this mean the wealthy can buy their way into the country, while partners and children of Kiwis who are waiting to get back into the country but cannot afford these servicesmiss out? There is still a lot to work through.
Regardless, it would be wise to have a plan to safely increase the elasticity of New Zealand’s entry points. That plan should be developed under urgency, for a number of reasons, including New Zealand’s tourism sector.
Our tourism infrastructure was built up over decades. Without tourists it will quickly crumble, increasing the complexity of any economic resurgence.
Before Covid-19, international travellerswere bringing $47 million into the country each day. Their spending accounted for 42 per cent of the annual $40.9 billion tourist industry.
Tourism creates 14.4 per cent of the country’s jobs. When you lose nearly half of that industry overnight, it is responsible to find ways to mitigate the impact.
It won’t be enough to tweak the border. Kiwis also need to turn their fascination with international travel inward. At least temporarily.
Even with the welcome change in alert levels that removes at least the psychological barrier to travel, and the looming school holidays, domestic tourism as we know it now will be hard-pressed to take up the slack left by the absence of international travellers.
For a start, domestic tourism traditionally surges during the 12 weeks of school holidays each year and outside those periods it is all but dead. It is also dominated by two lowspending groups – those visiting friends and family, and familieswith children. It’s often enough that they are in a different place from home. Spending on the expensive hotels, fancy dinners and expensive adventure activities that employ so many of us may not even be considered.
Tourist subsidies have been rolled out in several countries, offering discounts on meals, accommodation and activities.
While they do help get people travelling again, they are also politically and morally questionable, as inevitably they’re subsidising tourist activities for the middle class.
In New Zealand money is not necessarily the thing we need to encourage us to travel locally. It’s more about mindset.
Every year Kiwis take 3million trips overseas. We are famous for our love of travelling.
Every year 3.7 million international tourists used to fly in. We are famous as a place to travel to.
This won’t be the first time you’ve been told that now is the time to find out just why that is.
Kiwis also need to turn their fascination with international travel inward. At least temporarily.