Chinese visitors feed skydiving boom and shortage of jump masters

Friday, 6 January 2017

Leaping out of an plane on their New Zealand holiday is a high priority for many Chinese tourists.

Skydive operators are gearing up for a boom summer thanks to the Chinese craze for tandem parachute jumps.

Chinese travel agents have tried to double book clients at Queenstown-based NZONE so they don't miss out if flights are cancelled owing to bad weather.

Ashburton-based Skydiving Kiwis is hoping to invest in a larger plane so it can cater for growing demand from Chinese visitors.

Business development manager Derek Melnick said they refused double bookings because it wasn't fair on other customers 'but it indicates how desirable (skydiving) is.'

Over the past two years Australian-listed adventure tourism company Skydive the Beach Group has bought three southern operators - NZONE, Skydive Paradise at Glenorchy and Skydive Wanaka.

The skydiving industry is having to recruit from overseas as it prepares for another busy summer.

* Queenstown skydiving company sells for $17 million**

With the biggest share of the national skydive market they will put through between 500 and 600 customers a day at peak season, according to Melnick.

He said NZONE's Chinese customer numbers grew by over 50 per cent last year - more than double its next biggest market, which was Australia - and they show every sign of increasing again this year.

Chinese families often travelled together and it wasn't unheard of for all of them to do tandem jumps.

'I can recall an example where we had three generations out there on one trip and the oldest was in their seventies.'

Ashburton's Skydiving Kiwis is one of the newer companies on the block, but it too is looking at expanding to cater for the growing Chinese market.

Co-owner Greg Barraclough said they are looking at buying a bigger aircraft so they could increase their tandem jumps from 1800 to about 5000 annually.

Demand for qualified jump masters was also growing and Barraclough has just employed his first international staff member.

He said that the focus on more lucrative tandem jumps for tourists meant it was hard for Kiwis to do the prerequisite 750 solo jumps needed for a tandem rating.

Some would end up going to American were it was cheaper and easier to parachute. 'You can do 100 jumps in a week, in New Zealand that's very unlikely.'

Chair of the New Zealand Parachute Industry Association Stuart Bean said bigger skydive operators in Queenstown, Wanaka, Taupo and Auckland were struggling to get staff, so they employed qualified overseas people.

That's despite the fact that the number of commercial operators had almost halved to about 14 since industry regulations were tightened following the Fox Glacier crash of a skydive plane which killed all nine on board.

Bean said compliance costs made New Zealand skydive operations more expensive to run compared to Australia where regulations were much more relaxed.

The New Zealand Skydiving School attached to Skydive Auckland trains up to 40 students a year, but spokeswoman Fiona McLaren said they could only take 26 domestic students.

'We can't increase that without funding from the Government to have their course fees subsidised.'

Fees were $10,400 for the full time course and students also had to buy their own parachute gear which could cost almost as much again.

McLaren said all 12 of their recent graduates went straight into jobs, although it would take some time to work their way up to a tandem rating.