InterCity U-turn as tourist numbers rise
Regular buses are to start running along the West Coast again, a month after the company that operates the service said it couldn’t do so without continued government support.
InterCity will resume its operations between Nelson and Queenstown from December 12, increasing the three-daya-week service it operated through Covid, to four days a week.
The service was suspended on November 1, when government funding used to keep it running through the pandemic ended.
InterCity said at the time there were too few tourists in the country to prevent the company running a ‘‘loss-making’’ service, and urged the Government to reconsider its funding.
The company that runs InterCity buses, Entrada Travel Group, said yesterday it had decided to resume the route towards the end of November, based on ‘‘steadily increasing demand from connecting services across the national network’’.
General manager of marketing and technology Daniel Rode said a fourth day had been added to the weekly timetable to help stimulate demand.
No government subsidy was provided, Rode said.
The company would not comment further, saying only that it regularly reviewed connections throughout the network.
Westland District mayor Helen Lash said she was ‘‘absolutely thrilled’’ with the decision. She had said in October that stopping the bus service was a ‘‘devastating’’ move that would further hit the region’s already suffering tourism destinations.
Reversing the suspension was a ‘‘ huge relief’’ for the many people who used the service, Lash said.
‘‘It’s tourists, it’s local people getting to health facilities, it’s kids getting to boarding schools – it covers such a big area.’’
Lash hoped that good trade through the summer period would help to subsidise the bus company’s service during the slower trading period through winter.
‘‘The glacier region has got the highest tourism growth market coming out of Covid of any other area in New Zealand. We’ve got some significant bookings down here through to February, March. The demand is going to be there.’’
Manager of the YHA in Nelson, Royce Lock, said more international visitors were starting to come through Nelson, but nothing like pre-Covid levels.
Tourists tended to tour the South Island in an anticlockwise loop from Picton, visiting Nelson before the West Coast and Queenstown, Lock said.
‘‘The loads on [InterCity] buses on the east coast were obviously indicating that they probably could see that there was demand being forced over that way, that would have gone the other way.’’
Lock said he had been helping people book West Coast bus trips since the temporary closure of Nelson’s i-SITE in June.
Starting the InterCity service again was also great for West Coast residents who relied on public transport, he said.