HCA – How to bring back tourists and save the hotel sector
NZ Government action helpful in parts but ignoring the elephant in the room
While supporting the NZ Government’s newly-revised Resurgence Package and Wage Subsidy Scheme, Hotel Council Aotearoa (HCA) says the government is ignoring the elephant in the room and as long as borders remain closed and movement in and out of Auckland is restricted, the tourism sector has massive problems that justify ongoing targeted support.
HCA has released its own COVID recovery plan calling for an expansion of the wage subsidy program aimed at the tourism and hospitality industry until borders reopen and reasonable tourist inflows return.
Describing the government scheme as being helpful in parts, HCA strategic director, James Doolan said it was incredible to think that tourism, a key contributor to national economic wellbeing, once contributed to nine percent of New Zealand’s GDP and 20 percent of all exports and now appears to be an afterthought.
“Without international tourists and freedom of movement domestically, earnings for all tourism businesses are permanently impaired. It’s not just a lockdown or ‘code red’ problem,” he said.
“It seems likely that support payments will cease for businesses located in green areas although hotels and other tourism businesses in those areas will continue to face material financial hardship because of ongoing border closures and restrictions on domestic travel.
“Despite what the Government claims, tourism business simply cannot ‘operate as normal’ when the traffic light turns green. For the hotel sector, we won’t be back to normal until our international customers can safely return.
“Border restrictions are lingering long beyond anyone’s original estimation, so a path to re-opening is now critical. Employee and asset heavy businesses such as hotels cannot plan properly in an information vacuum.
“The current border settings as simply out-of-date now in the new, traffic-lights world. We should be getting vaccinated Kiwis home for Christmas and making real progress on safe reopening of our borders to international tourists once again.
“Every other country seems to be doing it. Why not New Zealand?
In its COVID recovery plan HCA is also calling for the introduction of an accelerated depreciation regime for tourism industry assets, including accommodation providers, which would enable renovations and repairs to be carried out before New Zealand reopens to the world.
“It is now time to give beleaguered tourism businesses some much needed clarity about when New Zealand can reconnect with our international friends, customers and loved ones,” Mr Doolan said.
Mike Parker-Brown is a UK-trained and qualified journalist and an award-winning travel communicator with more than 30 years experience.
Since 2002, Mike has worked as a freelance writer and PR consultant providing his services to major organisations in Australia and internationally in the tourism, aviation, hospitality, recruitment and export marketing sectors.
