The coastal views on the Cathedral Cove walk are stunning - but currently almost inaccessible. Photo / 123RF
Coromandel leaders trying to keep local businesses alive after wild weather effectively “closed” the region in the public’s minds this year had to ask the Beehive for help to get Google to take down outdated road information.
As the income-starved holiday mecca prays for a good summer and early re-opening of main access road State Highway 25A to bring back Auckland bach-owners, Thames-Coromandel Mayor Len Salt says there’s been more to the region’s plight than a road collapse and the closure of hugely popular visitor sites like the Cathedral Cove walkway.
These casualties are “an important part of the picture but not the whole picture”, he says. About 70 road sites were damaged in a string of weather events dating back to last year.
“One of the battles we’ve had has been trying to make sure people get up-to-date and accurate information about the accessibility of the region, its attractions and accommodation,” says Salt.
“If something goes up [online] saying there’s a storm and roads are closed, it stays there long after the event has finished and the sun has come out. It took us a little while to realise the effect of it.”
After months of unsuccessfully asking Google to change a road’s status, Salt’s council approached Government ministers to take its case for a correction to the tech giant, and eventually succeeded.
The upshot of the internet effect and the closure of SH25A - the road across the peninsula that links Kopu and Hikuai - is the public believes the Coromandel is “closed”, say business association leaders. Roading agency Waka Kotahi New Zealand Transport Agency has said the highway is due to re-open in late March after major repairs, including the construction of a new bridge.
Meanwhile, while international tourists arriving in Auckland haven’t minded so much taking the long, scenic coastal loop road to reach the region’s beach communities, for Aucklanders with baches in Pauanui, Tairua, Cooks Beach or Whitianga, that drive or the alternative route via Whangamatā has ruled out spontaneous Friday-night “let’s go to the beach for the weekend” ideas.
Salt says the effect on the local economy has been “absolutely devastating”.
“The roading impact is critical to all businesses and it’s been damaged to such an extent, it’s given them a real knock in terms of confidence - confidence to accept bookings, confidence to invest, confidence to employ people.
“The uncertainty around access and roading infrastructure - and that is a conversation we’ve had with Cabinet ministers - is having a long-term effect on our business confidence, which will be very difficult to restore.”
What with the Covid pandemic and then a run of severe weather from last year, Salt has to stretch his mind back to 2017 to recall the Coromandel’s “heyday”, when visitor numbers topped half a million people over the Christmas and New Year period.
“The peak was on December 31, when we had 146,000 visitors for the day with an overnight population of 126,000 - 43 per cent of those were from Auckland and 22 per cent from overseas.”
While locals speculate SH25A will open before March (Waka Kotahi is not ruling that out) and are optimistic about a hot summer and the return of Aucklanders, the economic pain continues for retailers, hospitality and tourism operators.
Thames-Coromandel District Council (TCDC) figures for March to August show total visitor spending in the district at $94 million was down 12.5 per cent on the same period last year. Derived from the council’s latest quarterly business impact survey conducted through local business associations, the figures show 8 per cent fewer visitor transactions.
However, local businesspeople told the Herald revenue is down by 30-50 per cent this year. In the survey result, 94.5 per cent of respondents said their profits had been hurt by the storms and nearly 91 per cent said their sales volumes had decreased - nearly 28 per cent reported their sales volumes were down by 40-60 per cent.
Andrea Johnson, owner-operator of Tairua’s Manaia Kitchen & Bar for 14 years, believes Tairua and Pauanui businesses have suffered the most.
She’s had to close her Pauanui business Restaurant Hera and says she has struggled to keep the Manaia operation going this year.
“Aucklanders haven’t been coming down because it’s such an ordeal. I had to make decisions for my health and wellbeing. I made a decision to focus on what I had [Manaia], and this business has had a 50-60 per cent loss. We’re all down about 50 per cent.
“We had a terrible summer and then the road [closure]. I’ve lived here for 33 years and have never seen it this bad. It’s been really tough, and I believe it’s affected mental health and morale.
“People are worried. If something goes wrong, say, a medical event, it’s hard getting out of here. The whole community has been affected in all areas of our lives.”
Johnson employed four people in Pauanui and usually has 15 staff at Manaia during summer.
Without cyclone relief funding, she says, “none of us would be open”.
“I’ve worked really hard to keep the doors open because my team is important, and there’s my 14 years of hard work. I’m not willing to walk away from that.”
Mercury Bay Business Association chairwoman Lynda Grant says most business revenue in the greater Whitianga area is down 30-50 per cent, with motels and cafes particularly hard-hit.
“People come to the wider area for Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove, so on top of our road issues, we have Cathedral Cove closed and we don’t have an opening date.”
She says tourists are still coming, “but will they continue to come if [they] can’t go to Cathedral Cove?”. Tracks to the cove were closed after damage from Cyclone Gabrielle, and the Department of Conservation says they won’t be reinstated for the coming summer, meaning access is by boat only.
Like Johnson, Grant says locals are trying to be positive and hoping for the forecast hot summer.
“But there is concern. Will people come, or will they choose another destination?”
Her business association has several events planned for the summer. A major blow was news the annual Greenstone Summer Concert, which injects $15m into the local economy, would be held in Hamilton early next year because organisers didn’t want a repeat of this year’s cancelled event.
At least one local business has relocated to Tauranga, Grant says, while others have reduced staff.
“We are reasonably resilient, but with Covid for three years and then continuing weather events, people are nervous about coming here.
“A lot of people are really nervous about employing staff for summer, so that has an effect on local people.”
An example of how the local economy has tightened is the local volunteer fire brigade’s decision not to put out its annual business directory this year.
“It’s a really good fundraiser and it’s the first year ever they’re not doing it. They haven’t got enough advertisers and the printing was too expensive.”
Grant and husband John, a TCDC councillor, own local radio station CFM.
“We cover the whole of the Coromandel to the Bombays and Hamilton, and we’ve seen some of our advertisers pull back, and a couple have stopped advertising but hope to continue again. We were a business [with] pretty good growth. Now we’ve had six months of no-growth,” she says.
In Whangamatā, the economy is also taking a hit, despite it becoming a main access road to the rest of the Coromandel with the closure of SH25A.
Enterprise Whangamatā chairman Patrick Kerr says there’s been a big increase in traffic.
“But we’re getting all the heavy traffic and people going north ... [they] just want to get there, they don’t want to stop.”
Retail transactions are down more than 20 per cent, Kerr says.
Like other community leaders, he’s very hopeful SH25A will open earlier than March, but that will still miss the important summer season.
“Fundamentally, the town is still quite positive despite all the issues we’ve had to face.”
The town has decided to spend its share of a region-wide $300,000 business support hand-out from the Government on organising events.
“Depressing as it is, we are being proactive. Enterprise Whangamatā is strong and rapidly growing. We haven’t lost any businesses, but I do know many are struggling.
“The issue is everyone outside the Coromandel thinks it is closed. It’s very difficult and expensive to promote that we are actually open.”
Salt says he knows of some business failures, but believes quick action by TCDC in securing Government financial support may have saved others.
“At the beginning of the year, before Cyclone Gabrielle, we reached out to the Government very quickly because our council has had experience with this [weather event response] before, and we were able to secure about $8m of direct support for affected businesspeople.
“That $8m - it had a cap of $40,000 per business - would have made a critical difference in helping them get through the worst of it.
“We’re starting to climb the hill on the other side. If we look at businesses we have that are still operating ... it feels like they have optimism. There’s a degree of confidence that they’ve survived this long, and the weather is looking more promising for summer.”
Some positives have come out of the crisis, Salt says.
“We’ve worked on the roading structure to make sure when we get weather events again, we are ready and prepared with our infrastructure. The silver lining has been that Waka Kotahi and our council stepped up very quickly and said, ‘We have to work together on this’.
“We have a state highway network and we have council-operated roads - we said, ‘If we don’t work together and regard this as one project, we are not going to fix the problem’.”
Together, he says, they identified 86 projects needing immediate attention and went to the Government with a funding request. The response came in an infrastructure funding package for the Coromandel and other badly storm-affected North Island regions.
“Another piece of good news was we identified the opportunity for local contractors to be part of the bigger picture, more than they have before, which means local jobs for local people and money staying in the district,” Salt says.
The council is working through the infrastructure rehabilitation programme “to build back in a more resilient way”, Salt says.
Rehabilitating local roads is estimated to cost $33m-$40m. Work on the business case is under way, he says.
They are big numbers for a district with a rating population of just 33,700. Ratepayers will feel the pain.
The council’s draft Annual Plan calls for a rate increase of 11.6 per cent, and Salt says a big chunk of the rise is for road rehabilitation. The council also wants to rebuild its $2m disaster contingency fund, which ran out last November - before the big storms of January and February hit.
“We’ve gone as low as we can go, and there’s a feeling of enthusiasm and energy we’re excited about”, says Salt.
“We’re confident bach owners will come - there is no place more beautiful than our Coromandel Peninsula.”
Andrea Fox joined the Herald as a senior business journalist in 2018 and specialises in writing about the dairy industry, agribusiness, exporting and the logistics sector and supply chains.
The Government has committed funding to the sector in an effort to support future plans.