We heard this week that the Labour government is going to sort out the problem of New Zealand having no labourers to pick the fruit and veg this upcoming season. Their response is too little and too late, unfortunately, and fully intertwined with their urgent desire to control businesses by forcing wage hikes and other controls.
But what of tourism? With the lack of an open border, or at least one between here and Australia, New Zealand’s iconic tourist towns are dying. Queenstown and Rotorua in particular are struggling for sure, quite simply they are dying, but what about the little towns like Paihia, Milford Sound, The Catlins, Mangonui? Are they already dead? Is there any coming back from our self imposed isolation?
Local tourism can only give us so much. Kiwis love taking our holidays at the beach or the lake. In winter we might take an annual weekend or if you’re able to, maybe a week at the snow. We may do a short jaunt to a city to see a show or a game, maybe a long weekend gettaway to a rented bach, but really that’s about it.
Think about how you holiday, and how your friends holiday, how your builder or sparky takes their breaks. Your doctor probably used to take an annual trip overseas and will now likely spend that money here, but when did you see your plumber having more than a week in Raro in winter and maybe two at a campground in summer as his vacation time? The fact is, kiwis just don’t spend much on our holidays.
We hear all the time from the Grant Robertsons of this world about how great our economy is doing. We hear about how the unemployment level isn’t as bad as what they thought it might be. It all sounds rosy, but it’s not. Our tourist towns are dying, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Sure there are some operators who are hanging in there. Some have help from the government because they are seen as special, some have managed to change tack and target a different market, but most are struggling.
New Zealanders as tourists in our own country simply don’t travel enough, and don’t spend enough when we do, to take up the slack from the loss of the international tourism.
The local Queenstown newspaper, The Mountain Scene, last week had an excellent article, ‘Can we stop pretending everything is still OK?’ by a local restaurant owner, Darren Lovell. Darren is hurting. He has tried to branch out with another pop-up operation but he’s struggling. He has had to lay off fourteen staff and close his Queenstown CBD restaurant as a full 75% of his customers in the past were not from New Zealand. His restaurant, Fishbone, was a local icon, started by one of Queenstown’s long time local identities and taken to greater heights by Darren.
His article is heartfelt and a must read. I urge you to take the time to click on the link above and take it in. This is the reality Queenstown is facing. Yes there will be a few tourists around this summer, but they certainly aren’t here yet. As Lovell says, there’s no queue at Fergburger. If there’s no queue at Fergburger then everyone is hurting.
Come the end of January, those locals that do come for summer will all be gone again. Maybe we will have a ski season next year, maybe we will be locked down again, who knows, but in any case, those good times are only really for two months each so what about the other eight to nine months of the year?
This is also the reality that Rotorua will be facing, Paihia too, maybe even Auckland. There are tens of thousands of Kiwi businessmen struggling like Lovell.
Almost all of my friends with their own tourist related businesses are in pain. One, a wedding celebrant has gone from being delightfully busy to being broke. Another with an AirBnB based business has lost it all and has had to sell his own property. My plumber is just now starting to get back on his feet after the lockdowns but most of his ongoing business, refitting hotels, has gone as they have stopped all non-essential work. Actually many of them have stopped essential work too, there simply isn’t the money to pay for it. He’s now doing building work and buying and selling cars to make ends meet. He’s lucky that he has other skills, and other avenues to find income but not everyone is so fortunate. He certainly can’t afford any race car parts so he can’t even take part in his favoured leisure activity anymore.
The Mountain Scene back in early November, following the Labour landslide, had an opinion piece from the editor asking when the new immigration minister Kris Faafoi might grace Queenstown with his presence. It had been 757 days since the previous minister, the highly incompetent Ian Lees-Galloway had put in an appearance. The editor was hoping it might not take so long for Faafoi to show up but to put the pressure on, instigated a counter that would live on the front page of the weekly to show how many days it had been until Faafoi visited. It is currently sitting at 24 days. I suspect it won’t get to 757 but let’s see.
Apparently, there is a counter running in the background for the Tourism Minister too but to be honest, the longer Stuart Nash stays away from us the better as he’ll only come down here to berate us for not focussing on his favoured class of people, the ultra-rich.
The stupid thing is that some of the answers are actually pretty easy. Putting some sort of stay on work visa restrictions so transient workers can simply apply for any job they could get would do wonders for the lack of worker problem that is so prevalent in towns like Queenstown. It wouldn’t have to be forever, but how hard would that be to do? It would not be taking jobs from Kiwis as they are not applying for the jobs anyway.
The bigger problem is the lack of tourists. The big stumbling block is the border. Until we get at a minimum free and easy travel from the West Island, our tourist towns are buggered.
Yes, some of those tourist operators have been taking the mickey with pricing in the past so are partly to blame for their problems, but that doesn’t help their employees who can’t pay their rent.
Without tourists, these towns will all die.
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