The Tourist tax should be far higher than $35 to truly build the infrastructure our rapacious tourism industry floods us with annually.
I see little benefit to the average Kiwi who has to live with the overcrowding tourism generates, the industry seems to be of loaded economic benefit.
Take the situation at many major ports right now. Normally access to our waterfront is guaranteed, but when those bloody cruise ships come in to town, much of that access is shut down to locals to process the ships, and the amount of days that occurs is steadily rising.
This influx of cruise ship tourists with large wallets leads to retail rents in the area spiking and the cluster of luxury brand shops to explode.
Some will call that progress, I call it economic segregation.
The industry claims that International tourism brought us $14.5 billion in 2017 with 3.5million tourists.
That’s almost the entire domestic population of NZ visiting us.
While I certainly believe NZ businesses do well from tourism, and that it will continue to play a vital role in our economic future, I don’t believe this unsustainable level of tourism has been properly provided for in terms of the infrastructure necessary to carry the current level of visiters.
It’s time for those visiting us to not only be paying for a Tourist Tax for infrastructure, Australians included, it’s time to start thinking about what peak tourism would be because right now, NZ is at risk of killing the very thing that is attracting those 3.5million to us.
There’s little point in making $14.5b from International Tourists each year if they are eroding the natural and pristine environment they are all coming to see.
TDB Blogger, Christine Rose, summed up the dilemma in a blog from 2016…
New Zealand’s natural environment and associated ‘brand’ provide our tourism industry with a competitive advantage, according to the Tourism Export Council of New Zealand. At least 35% of international visitors come here primarily to experience our natural landscapes and other values, and most of these are associated with the public conservation estate managed by the Department of Conservation. Our natural heritage shapes the Kiwi identity, and underpins much of the rest of our economy, such as primary production. However, lack of infrastructure and Department of Conservation funding deficits threaten to kill the golden tourism goose and to trample on its eggs.
Our biodiversity is already declining and visitor pressures exceed capacity, and when this is set in the context of wider environmental damage and enclosure of the commons, it’s hard to see how the tourism growth model can be environmentally or economically sustainable.Â
…our clean green myth is driven by LOTR cinematography that is at risk of being degraded by the huge influx of visitors.
The Tourist Tax is a start, it needs to be higher and this targeted funding most be used to upgrade tourism infrastructure while we ponder how many tourists are too many tourists.
Tourism NZ has been allowed to bowl along without much forward thinking, we’ve allowed Dairy and the International Education Industry to do that too.
It’s time to start rethinking that.
I fully agree here as we are susidising a private industry here and getting nothing back for it.
When we tried to get the National Governmet to fix our Gisborne rail washed out in a one km section in 2012 the National Government said;
“we need to protect the taxpayers money and spend it wisely and not subsidise services that dont pay their way.”
Tourism is not paying its way either, so we need to make them pay as we should(according to National Party ideology) ‘pay their way’.
Tourism is a rort; – for privateers involved in tourism.
Any country that has so far heavily relied on tourism, largely a low wage economy, has not gained all that much, but servitude, prostitution, destruction of its own culture and environment, so why should the BS ‘clean green’, ‘100 percent’ and otherwise fake NZ Inc beat that tradition?
Look at the liabilities of tourism world wide, pollution, crime, corruption, slavery, prostitution, economic over dependence, social and economic deterioration and more, and the best solution is to find other ways of running the economy.
It is NOT worth going down this way, and the ‘industry’ is of course one like any pimp that may find a way to extort money out of any client’s pocket, no matter how and how much.
NZ is becoming ever more so screwed up, but the government is too business friendly and only sees an opportunity to raise more bucks, by levies and taxes.
You have ALL sold out.
New Zealanders are getting a bit pissed off with tourists shitting in our own backyard.
+100 Great Post …
$200 to enter the country and DOC huts and tracks should be paid for by tourists…not in a small way
The growth in tourism was encouraged to prop up the National party with no thought to ongoing planning or consideration of consequenses. We who live in tourist areas with a small ratepayer base have been used for the profit of others. Not only have our rates been used to subsidise the tourist industry but in many ways our way of life and our freedom has been changed. Freedom to enjoy peace and solitude and to walk without haveing to avoid human s… is becomng more and more difficult. Low paid jobs often working split shifts with the profits going elsewhere as largely been the result. If camper vans had been parked outside of John Keys house changes would have been made.
+100 GERALD
It is not the tourists’s fault that infrastructure and facilities are insufficient. How can it be? What a cheek! Isn’t NZ$ 14.5 billion income from tourism enough for greedy NZers? It a something for nothing mentality here, closely aligned to that miserable NZ trope “She’ll be right”.
In addition to the very visible effects it is worth noting that international tourism, especially that involving commercial airline flights and car rentals, is one of the most effective ways of depleting precious fossil fuel reserves and pushing atmospheric chemistry even further from the pre-industrial norms. In other words, tourism is major contributor to bringing forward collapse of the global economic system through energy starvation and to bringing forward collapse of the global environment via excess CO2 loading.
However, tourism does bring in quick, short-term profits for opportunists. And that’s what it’s all about these days.
$35 is not enough — this is a tiny fraction of the cost of the air fare to get here (given that we are so far from anywhere other than Oz), which they’ve already been able to afford. Say $100. Tourists put off by that amount would not be the sort spending much when they’re here (see Mike the lefty above). Sounds elitist, but speaking selfishly, we really only want the “better class of tourist”, well-heeled and free-spending, and not too vastly numerous; the hordes of backpackers add little to the economy and clog the countryside (not to mention their informal toilet habits).
Caps. We need environmental caps. Population 5 million. Tourism 3.5million or less.
That’s what happens when liers and imbeciles control immigration and education.
Agree 1000%.
While they are about it, can the the government start employing people to monitor the actual quality of some of the immigration scam hotels and cafe’s popping up, everywhere. Yep we all know that NZ has never been a chef’s paradise but the standards are dropping as fast as the prices are rising and the $2 p/h brigade of employers are expanding.
Had the misfortune to stay at one hotel, looked like formally it was a 4 – 5 star hotel and the photos made it look great. But funny enough no reviews and a recent name change… hmmm, well if paying 4 star hotel rates, while having what looked like 2 staff members recently arrived from India who although very polite, just referred everything to the absent manager, including stinky fridge, lights not working, bits falling off doors onto your head, threadbare stained carpet, dirty stained toilet, and rat bait under the bed sounds like a great NZ luxury experience then NZ is the new place to come to! They put a new light on ‘adventure tourism’. Some of our NZ venues are more survivor now, than holiday, but at 4 star prices.
Not only that, if you now eat out in Auckland at your peril. Most of the ‘chefs’ seem to be more microwave artists if they even remember to heat up the food, this is not just the dives you would expect, but right up to waterfront places charging the earth.
An accountant seems to have been through and run the numbers into many establishment to make meals from 50c and turn them into $20. $1 into $30 and so forth. Soon all you get is Talleys fish and chips in sewer oil reheated https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7971983/China-goes-organic-after-scandal-of-cooking-oil-from-sewers.html
all for the price of $27. If you can’t afford that then treat yourself to a beaker of smoothie for $8, special glasses to hold as little drink as possible. For the millennial sadly, avocado smash is off the menu, because avocados seem to be too healthy and expensive at many places.
For our dimwit politicians and industry, people no matter what nationality want quality. In NZ we are not selling that anymore especially not to our own people and tourists. How the Fuck did this happen?
It also shows how if NZ had got into organics (aka look at the link above about the sewer oil) a lot sooner instead NZ industry could have taken the Chinese market by storm.
Sadly we got Beingmate instead and our revered dimwits of Dairy lost money in China, possibly because they had yet to hear of the word, Internet sales and thought people still went to stores and confused Beingmate with Beingonthetake instead.
P.s not sure if true, but someone told me Fonterra pay the farmers the same and hardly any more for their organic milk because they don’t really agree with the concept of organic, but then charge consumers nearly double the price. What a pinnacle of industry!
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