$80k ‘free’ cash on Waiheke Island

Aucklanders are descending on Waiheke Island this weekend armed with $80,000 in spending money, but small businesses say there is still a long road back to recovery.

Waiheke business owners earlier joined together to deliver the wildly successful On The House tourism promotion, with promises of more special deals in the coming months.

In the campaign, the owners of 80 Waiheke Island holiday rentals promised guests who were booking stays for this weekend they would get their money back in Waiheke dollars — credit that could be spent at local businesses.

This could be used to pay for wine tasting, shopping or zip lining adventures.

Other possibilities included renting a car or e-bike, playing a round of golf, booking a scenic flight or dining at a host of Waiheke’s awardwinning restaurants.

Guests paying $5700 for two nights at the exclusive Island Retreat rental, for instance, would get $5100 back in Waiheke dollars to spend elsewhere on the island after booking and cleaning fees were deducted.

It led to all 80 holiday rentals selling out within hours of going live on the site. Organisers were also swamped with 3500 email inquiries and 25,000 visits to their new website.

As a result, 340 guests were yesterday arriving on the island with $80,663 in Waiheke dollars to spend at local businesses.

“Safe to say we have been overwhelmed with the response,” one of the organising team Andrew Glenn said.

With tourism dealt a savage economic blow by the Covid-19 pandemic, the team was now planning more deals and potentially looking to export the campaign model to other tourist hotspots across the country.

Before the On The House promotion, one Waiheke Island property management business reported June accommodation bookings had been down 72 per cent compared to last year.

Another wine tour operator watched bookings drop from 490 people last May to only four last month.

However, the promotion had given an immediate boost to Auckland Seaplanes, which offers scenic flights above Auckland and Waiheke Island.

Chief executive Chris Sattler praised the campaign, saying his seaplanes were about 70-80 per cent booked this weekend.

Some guests had chosen to book his planes to take them over to Waiheke rather than using the ferry.

He was also cautiously optimistic looking ahead. He had partnered with another company to move a larger, seven-seater plane to Waiheke from this weekend onwards in anticipation of greater demand for scenic flights going ahead.

However, his team still faced many challenges as international visitors typically accounted for 70 per cent of business.

Similarly, Mark Seaviol, owner of Waiheke Bike Shop, said he had been battling to cope with the loss of foreign tourists.

He said international tourists often had bigger spending budgets and came to Waiheke without transport and so were more inclined to hire an e-bike to sightsee and get around.

Seaviol praised the On The House campaign but said so far it had not given his business a big lift in bookings. He had reduced his fleet of e-bikes in response to the slowdown after lockdown, and suspected most of the guests would spend their Waiheke dollars on food and wine.

“It’ll be interesting to see how much money is left over at the end for us,” he said.

Meanwhile Glenn from the On The House campaign said the team was planning a second Waiheke promotion in July or August. They were also looking at how it could benefit holiday rental owners.

“On The House is great because it supports local, is community-minded and ‘backs your backyard’. It’s a circular economic model that’s a winwin for all.”