South Island tourism operators mull election issues

Saturday, 16 September 2023

It has been hellish for the tourism operators in the three years since the last election. As the industry recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, JOANNE NAISH asks business owners if there is a mood for change.

When Hugh Waghorn was a young penniless man he voted Green, but since he got older and richer, he now votes blue.

“Over the years I’ve worked hard to build up some assets and have become more conservative.”

The founding owner of Akaroa Dolphins says business has bounced back since the borders opened.

“We never got below 50% of our market due to the best domestic market we have ever seen supporting tourism operators through that period so we are very happy with that.”

Immigration challenges

Since the borders reopened, tourists have been returning to New Zealand in steadily rising numbers. According to Stats NZ, close to 200,000 overseas visitors arrived in the four weeks to August 20, 64% more than in the same four weeks in 2022.

The bounce back caught the company off-guard due to a lack of staff so the most important election issue for him is immigration.

“We advertise for Kiwis and get no-one. Immigration laws don’t help us at all. We went through the accredited employer process and it doesn’t work for us at all. It just cost us a lot of money.”

The Accredited Employer Work Visa system was aimed at speeding up the process by employers applying for accreditation to employ overseas staff. It’s under urgent review after complaints that migrants were being exploited and made to pay up to $30,000 for non-existent jobs.

Akaroa Dolphins found a worker from Czech Republic who came to New Zealand, got fully trained and was doing a wonderful job but had to leave after three months because she was unable to secure an extension from Immigration New Zealand.

“It just goes on and on and on. The Government seem to be going out of their way to make life as miserable as possible. It makes no sense at all,” Waghorn says.

Former Tourism Minister Stuart Nash promised a reset of the tourism industry, saying New Zealand should aim to attract higher end tourists, instead of backpackers who “travel around our country on $10 a day eating two-minute noodles”.

Waghorn says tourism operators are desperate for backpackers on working holiday visas in the high season.

“We need those two-minute noodle people who do all the work in restaurants and for the likes of us.”

On a more positive note, he commends the Labour Government for its work on the Marine Mammal Act, which offers better protection for wildlife and its raising of the minimum wage.

However, he does not support Labour’s fiscal policies, including cherry picking some operators to receive $500,000 from the strategic assets protection programme aimed at saving key tourism businesses.

“They thought if they kept one afloat the money would spread around but it only made those businesses’ competitors worse off,“ he says.

“The Labour Government introduced more public holidays without any regard for finances. If I ran my business like the Labour government is running the country I would go broke.

“There doesn’t seem to be any responsibility in their spending but they keep doing it.”

Queenstown businessman Trent Yeo is also in the mood for change, but will not be voting for National or Labour.

“I'm more than left and right. I'm progressive. I realise more and more as I've got older that for me it’s about a progressive view and a future focus.”

He says the two main parties are both too concerned about capturing the large centre vote and trying to be all things to all people that they were almost indistinguishable.

“The two best actually would be for Labour and National to join a coalition. It's a crazy idea for people but they're actually most similar in what they're saying, more than ACT and National.”

His votes would be going to the Green Party or The Opportunities Party, or both because of their stance on innovation, sustainability and decarbonisation of transport.

“The main parties haven't really hit the nail on the head… I feel like the economics of the Greens Party has come to the fore. I feel like they have the ethics of the country and its future focus on the table and they have funded it through some pretty smart action and I think some pretty smart incentives.”

It has been “a bit terrible” for the tourism industry in the last three years.

“From a global perspective New Zealand’s response to [the pandemic] was necessary … but we could have had a better and more front-footed plan around our exit,” he says.

He’s concerned about the lack of recognition from politicians of how important tourism is to the country’s economy but also reputation.

Cost of living

Dale Burrows from Franz Josef says one of his biggest concerns coming into the election was the cost of living.

“The cost of living crisis is essentially driving up our own prices to try and combat that so that we can continue to try and make a living doing what we do.”

His business took advantage of Jobs for Nature funding, but it was still a struggle to survive through the closed borders and he believes the country could have opened up sooner.

“There was a lot of subsidies going around and a bit of support so that was good.”

But he suspects the country will “take a fair bit of recovering from the position that we got put in”, he says.

He questions Labour’s spending and thinks National has better solutions.

“Willy nilly spending was happening and where is it all gone? I do think National are going to do better at managing the finances of the country and trying to get us back on the right track of stopping spending our way out of the crisis and just throwing money at it.”

Minimum wage

Punakaiki tourism operator Patrick Volk says he’s excited to know how the election will go.

“I don’t want to tell you who I am voting for because that could affect my business. But I will tell you it needs to have a change regarding the economy especially for business.”

He supports the Government’s initial response to Covid-19.

“For one-and-a-half years they did a fantastic job but over the last half of the term they dropped the ball and made big mistakes and wrong decisions. They raised the minimum wage twice. Could they not have postponed that until the economy was ready for that.

'It put more pressure on already hurt businesses.”

Volk employs up to 40 people and believes there is almost no support for mid-range businesses like his.

“How can I afford to pay an 18-year-old with no experience, no knowledge, $22.70 an hour to scoop ice-creams and serve flat whites? I would have to charge $9 for the flat white to make that profitable.”

‘Trust us’

Labour leader and Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says the Government is “working really hard” to reinvigorate tourism markets and to get workers into the country.

“The slower than projected recovery out of China has had an impact on our tourism industry. But we are seeing tourism levels, particularly here in the South Island, starting to get closer to what they were pre Covid-19. So there's light at the end of the tunnel for our tourism operators.”

He says National is proposing to tax people coming in at the border, which would provide a significant deterrent to workers coming into the country.

National would not manage the economy better than Labour, Hipkins says.

“We've shown over the last three years that New Zealanders can trust us to lead the country through really difficult times and it's a difficult part of the economic cycle at the moment. We bring the same discipline and focus to managing through a difficult economic cycle that we brought to managing the country through the global pandemic.

“We will bounce back better and stronger from the current economic environment that we're in.”