Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Eve Lawrence: Intrepid Travel GM on the risks of raising the International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy

Transcript

Eve Lawrence: Intrepid Travel GM on the risks of raising the International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Tourist debate. It's raging this morning over how many tourists
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: this new tax height will turn off a visit to
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Middle Earth. The international tourist levy is currently thirty five dollars,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: but from the start of next month it'll cost visitors
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: arriving here one hundred dollars. The tourism industry says forty
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: eight thousand fewer tourists will come here as a result,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and they spend almost three hundred million dollars. So who's right?
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Who's wrong? Eve Lawrence is with Inid Intrepid Travel New Zealand. Eve,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: good morning, Good morning. Do you who do you think
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: is right here? Do you think you know the numbers
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: being banded about are possible that we could lose fifty
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: thousand tourists a year?
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I absolutely do. I think coss New Zealand is
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: losing competitiveness in the tourism landscape, and I think it's
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: absolutely possible we could lose a lot of revenue to
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: New Zealand.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: What types of tourists would be affected most? Do you think?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Well, when you think about the recent increases in visa fees,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: we're talking about the ash market as well. Here. If
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: you look at a family of four coming over to
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: New Zealand from China. They're already now going to be
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: looking at around two thousand dollars just to choose New
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Zealand as a holiday destination. And that's before they even
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: think about booking flights or coming here and paying for
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: on ground services.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Is that two thousand extra on top of what they
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: were paying because of recent heights or that's two thousand total.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: That's two thousand total. So the visa fees of doubled
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: and the IVL has now increased by one hundred and
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: eighty five percent.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: How does that compare to similar markets that they might
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: otherwise go to. I saw Australia put there livy up,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: albeit only ten bucks in July.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they absolutely did. But the reality is we are
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: still lagging far behind a lot of other nations in
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: terms of our recovery from pre COVID. We're only sitting
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: at eighty percent visitation of pre COVID numbers, whereas Australia
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: are going to recover to one hundred percent in around
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: about the next three months. We're lagging behind in air
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: connectivity and we're also lagging behind now on price.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Would you argue now's not the right time. Do you
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: can see that we do need at some point to
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: increase this levy because it pays for the upkeep of
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: our national parks, et cetera.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah one, But that's also something that hasn't been given
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: to us or hasn't been discussed, is what this funding
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: mechanism is actually going to be going towards and how
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: it's going to be distributed. So we need to understand
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: what's going to go towards tourism and what's going to
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: be pushed towards conservation.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: They've seen fifty to fifty split.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but who's that going to go to and how's
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: that going to be distributed? And of course we support
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: an increase, but a three week window in order for
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: us to push this out to travel agent market is
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: not long enough. So October twenty twenty five would have
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: been a more reasonable time frame.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Actually, I suppose people have already booked. Well, if you've
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: already booked, what you have already paid and therefore you
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be affected from next month.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: But who knows? I think is it for new applications
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: or are people that have already submitted thendd ETA going
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: to be expected to increase their fee if they arrive
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: after the first of October.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: It's a good question, could get missy, couldn't it? Eve?
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Thank you for that, Eve Lawrence and Trepid travel New Zealand.
• 3:09
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• 3:13
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• 3:14
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