Surging interest in holiday inquiries
Website visits and inquiries for trans-Tasman travel packages have skyrocketed since the Australian travel bubble was announced.
The Travel Corporation (TTC)’s New Zealand managing director, Scott Cleaver, said inquiries and search traffic for TTC’s main brands – such as Contiki – had increased 500 per cent yearon-year, since the April 6 announcement.
Despite the boom in interest, ‘‘what ifs’’ were stalling a corresponding rise in sales, he said.
Cleaver would not share exact figures, but said sales were roughly on-par with turnover at this time in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic began.
‘‘I think we will start to see an upturn in the next month or so. The eyes on the sites are already there, we have already seen that spike. We just need people now to be able to get through.’’
New Zealanders and Australians will be able to travel quarantine-free between their countries from 11.59pm on April 18.
Cleaver said the creation of similar bubbles with Europe and North America would be unlikely this year.
Based on vaccine rollouts and alignment of government practices, TTC was predicting these parts of the globe would open up about March 2022.
TTC operates brands including Trafalgar, Contiki, and AATKings in New Zealand and Australia.
The biggest winners from the Australia bubble would be the tourism attractions that interested foreigners, but were usually given the miss by domestic tourists, Cleaver said.
These include highbudget excursion activities such as helicopter tours and bungy jumps, immersive experiences like farm visits, and visits to cultural sites and indigenous attractions.
Cleaver said the Australian travel bubble wasn’t the end of Covid-19’s impact on the travel industry, but it was the beginning of the end.
TTC had cut roughly a quarter of its staff since the pandemic began, shrinking from roughly 80 to close to 60.
Since the travel bubble was announced, Cleaver said two of the people let go had been rehired.
Cleaver said the owners of the company – all of whom come from one family – had decided to retain as many staff as possible, and use the downtime to develop new systems and processes to enable a rapid bounce back postCovid.