Air New Zealand has suffered another heavy loss. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Air New Zealand has suffered another heavy loss. Photo / Mark Mitchell
EDITORIAL
Air New Zealand is a barometer of tourism in this country and its financial performance reflects the storm that continues to envelop the sector.
The airline is the country's biggest tourism business and reported yet another heavy loss yesterday, its half-year pre-tax loss doubling to $376 million while AucklandAirport, traditionally a reliable generator of both profits and dividends, has again recorded its third half-year loss.
Both the airline and airport are well-run companies but have for the past two years been ravaged by the pandemic. Domestic business has been hit by government lockdowns and now, self-imposed limits on travel. As one tourism leader put it, some people are too worried to go to the letterbox, let alone go on a trip to another part of the country. Closed international borders mean only homeward bound Kiwis are flying in with just a sprinkling of others travelling for business and a few for leisure.
Figures from Stats NZ show international travel last year was at a level not seen for 40 years, with just 207,000 arrivals, down from 3.9 million in 2019.
The absence of tourists has given the sector more time to carry on work it already had under way on a more sustainable visitor industry. But that is the only positive spinoff for the international industry which before the pandemic earned $17.5 billion of foreign exchange and provided more than 220,000 direct jobs, many in the regions.
Tourist numbers have plunged in the past two years. Photo / Greg Bowker
Businesses that could not sufficiently make the switch away from the international market to focus on domestic visitors are now hanging by a thread, or have failed.
A recently conducted Tourism Industry Aotearoa survey of almost 200 operators found they are struggling as never before.
Respondents expect their revenues will be down by 60 per cent in the current quarter compared to the same period last year. This in turn was half that of pre-Covid levels due to the loss of income from international visitors.
An estimated 70,000 jobs have been lost in tourism already and the industry is worried that as the rest of the world opens up to tourists, New Zealand will get left behind. This week Australia dropped all quarantine and isolation requirements for vaccinated arrivals as that country, a fierce rival for international tourism spend, kicks its wounded visitor sector back into life.
While MIQ rules are being relaxed for Kiwi arrivals from Australia next week and from the rest of the world from mid-March, under current plans the first international tourists aren't welcome until the middle of the year and at this stage must self-isolate for a week. This has been described as a demand killer by the tourism industry, which wants them back sooner and the isolation requirement dropped.
There are fresh signs that the Government may further relax self-isolation rules as the Omicron outbreak intensifies here, meaning the odds of transmission fall further at the border compared to being infected in the community.
Officials are reportedly reviewing the border programme but the industry is desperate for an explicit commitment to further relaxing or removing isolation for everyone as soon as possible.
Two years into the pandemic, the Government has been criticised for struggling to ''walk and chew gum at the same time'' in some areas; its approach to international tourism being one of them. Now would be a good time to learn the skill, and quickly.
