Slow processing of South East Asian visitor visas is costing the tourism industry dearly

Monday, 11 November 2019

The introduction of a New Zealand electronic travel authority experienced a few hiccups.

The tourism industry is increasingly anxious about delays in processing visitor visas for South East Asian countries.

Visa-related cancellations are hitting some agents hard with one reporting a $258,000 loss for October and November.

Tourism Export Council chief executive Judy Chen said processing times for low risk travellers from India and China had doubled over the last two years and Immigration NZ (INZ) had recently issued a warning to expect delays over peak season.

While the situation for Indian visitors had improved slightly, those from countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia were now experiencing unacceptably long delays, and if some family members' visas did not come through in time, the whole group would cancel.

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Tourism Export Council chief executive Judy Chen says processing times for visitor visas from India have improved slightly, but the wait for those from South East Asian countries is growing.

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* Visa delays blamed for a slow down in Indian visitors

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That was not good news when visitor growth was softening with arrivals from Asia for the 12 months to the end of August down 40,671 on the previous year.

'Everyone is very anxious that we're getting into the second summer season, and despite INZ saying new measures put into place had made things better, we've not seen it from an operational point of view,' said Chen.

New Zealand Journeys brings 13,500 mostly Asian visitors here annually and managing director John Dam said the late visa processing had cost him $258,000 in the past two months as groups pulled out of planned trips.

Visa processing delays mean some South East Asian visitors don't make it through the departure gates.

Earlier in the year a corporate incentive trip for 64 Vietnamese had to leave about half the group behind because their visas had not come through by departure date, and that led to cancellation fees from hotels and a coach company.

'The rest of them came but they were not happy.'

Dam said part of the problem was that INZ had centralised processing in Beijing, and that office had told him applications were allocated to an immigration officer within three or four weeks of being lodged.

'I was shocked and horrified that for a visitor visa it takes up to 30 days before it's allocated to an immigration officer for assessment.'

Feedback from overseas agents indicated visa difficulties made us a hard sell. 'As a destination New Zealand gets a bad reputation,' said Dam.

INZ operations manager Michael Carley said that 90 percent of all general visitor visa applications were processed within 20 days, and from the end of October those from Indian nationals were allocated to an immigration officer within 12 working days.

New staff had been recruited for offices in Mumbai and Beijing, and INZ would expand its Auckland office, as well as retaining visa processing in Manila.

That would help reduce processing times, as would as an increase in visa applications being submitted online.

When Stuff asked Tourism New Zealand (TNZ) to outline what impact the delays were having, and whether it could put a figure on the financial impact, a spokesman provided the following statement.

'We are continuing to work with Immigration New Zealand to monitor markets and have seen improvements in India processing times.'

TNZ chief executive Stephen England-Hall had earlier estimated visa delays had resulted in a $50m loss in spending from Indian visitors opting for an alternative holiday destination.

Introduction of INZ's new electronic travel authority (ETA) now appears to be going smoothly.

As of October 1 visitors from about 60 visa-waiver countries have needed an ETA before they can board a plane or cruise ship coming to New Zealand.

INZ had opted not to enforce the ETA for the first month to avoid travellers missing flights, but the phase in period has ended and airlines have been instructed not to take passengers without one.

INZ policy director Nick Aldous said several hundred travellers had since turned up at airports without an ETA, but they had all been able to obtain one in time 'or depending on the circumstances, INZ has allowed boarding to occur.'

The ETA application process also collects the $35 a head international visitor levy. As of last week it had netted more than $22.6m which will be split between tourism and conservation projects.