A tale of two Queenstowns

Global travel hot-spot battling rental crisis as landlords shun long-termers for Airbnb, writes Brent Melville

The Otago lakes region also featured the only resort to make the Conde´ Nast gold list for 2023 — Lake Hāwea Station.

Queenstown has featured in the top quarter of the world’s most loved destinations, even as it finds itself in the grip of one of its worst rental housing crises.

Ironically, accommodation is cited as its top attraction.

The holiday resort town featured in 25th place in this year’s global Tourism Sentiment Index, up from 44th last year. It was the only New Zealand destination to make the top 100.

The index is based on consumer sentiment, and is generated by 1.6 billion online conversations and content pieces on more than 21,000 global destinations.

The Otago town is in good company on the list, sandwiched between the golf resort of Scottsdale, Arizona and the Caribbean island of Aruba.

Of the 25 Australian destinations listed in this year’s ranking, Whitsundays (2nd), Sunshine Coast (3rd), Yarra Valley (5th), Cairns (9th), Esperance (12th), Noosa (14th) and Shoalhaven came in ahead of Queenstown. The Maldives came in top place in this year’s index.

ACCOMMODATION CRISIS

The Otago lakes region also featured the only resort to make the Conde´ Nast gold list for 2023 — Lake Hāwea Station.

The station is a part-working farm, part high-design retreat about 15 minutes’ drive from Wānaka.

And while that’s great as a drawcard for international visitors, the reality is the region is suffering an extreme lack of worker and visitor accommodation, an issue that’s now the No 1 priority for the Queenstown Lakes District Council and its new mayor, Glyn Lewers.

Lewers blames a re-energised tourism market, changes to tenancy legislation and new healthy home standards, which apply to long-term rentals but not short-term accommodation.

There’s been a surge in the number of homeowners turning their longerterm rentals into Airbnbs, aimed squarely at the tourism market but shutting out workers.

Under former mayor Jim Boult’s tenure, the council changed its proposed district plan to put restrictive rules on residential visitor accommodation.

District Council general manager for planning and development Tony Avery said the plan, which would have made the council the first to regulate short-term renting, was to “balance the needs of visitors with the locals who live and work here”.

DISAPPOINTING

Following an appeal headed by Airbnb Australia Limited, the Environment Court held that any building established as a residence could be used for visitor accommodation.

The proviso was that the number of permitted days varied across zones through the region, ranging from 42 nights in the Jacks Point zone to 90 nights and higher in other zones. Lewers said the court’s decision was “disappointing”, but he accepted that under the Resource Management Act there wasn’t enough evidence to draw a direct link between housing issues and the supply of visitor accommodation.

Avery said the council will now lobby the minister of housing and submit on central government’s draft resource management reform legislation, aiming to introduce reforms enabling short-term letting to be addressed in the future national planning framework.