About $16.5 million will have been spent by June on what to do about over-tourism in Milford Sound, but Tourism Minister Matt Doocey says the work has been, at times, “incoherent”. Are we about to see very little change after so much money over more than seven years? Derek Cheng
Milford Sound over-tourism master plan: Will new ministers push back on feasibility report proposals?
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It’s more than two and a half years since the MOP’s master plan was published. It included several ideas that would preserve the special aura of the place, while enhancing the experience for the estimated 1.1 million annual visitors by 2030.
One of the plan’s key proposals is to put most of the 5000 to 6000 people a day on buses, starting in Te Anau. There would be several places of interest - to be developed - along the Milford SH94 corridor where the buses would stop.
Other suggestions include banning cruise ships and fixed-wing aircraft, which some tourism operators fear would see them go belly-up.
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In June this year, the MOP will send a feasibility report to a ministerial advisory board, which will then hand it to Cabinet ministers for final consideration.
Other conservationists will be taking note; the project is touted as a potential blueprint for other congested areas such as Aoraki/Mt Cook, Franz Josef and the Tongariro Crossing.
The previous Government was largely supportive of the master plan, saying the pre-pandemic tourist experience was crowded, rushed, noisy and unsafe.
But new Tourism Minister Matt Doocey has labelled some of the MOP’s work “incoherent”, meaning the possibility looms that the status quo - or something similar - will remain.
‘As it was forever’
“Piopiotahi - New Zealand As It Was Forever” is the guiding principle behind the MOP master plan. Reconciling that with increasing tourist numbers - including “intense congestion” between 10am and 2pm - is the crux of the matter.
Tourist numbers doubled from 2012 to 2019 to about 870,000 - 83 per cent from overseas, and about half of them coming from Queenstown for a one-day visit. Those numbers, however, don’t include workers, recreational users such as boaties or climbers, or the 200,000-odd people a year who arrive via cruise ships.
This summer, tourist numbers were at 80 to 90 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, according to MOP programme director Chris Goddard, but vehicles were already at 100 per cent, meaning more visitors taking their own vehicles.
He won’t say if the current numbers are too high, instead pinpointing two areas of congestion at peak times: one is the wharf, where cars end up driving around for dozens of minutes until a car park becomes available, and the other is Homer Tunnel, which is a one-way choke point with long queues.
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“The master plan gives us options to try and spread people out differently so that we don’t have peak visitation in that 10am to 2pm time,” he told the Herald.
Most visitors drive straight to the wharf and jump on a boat tour, but the master plan proposes half a dozen places of interest featuring nature walks, cycleways, camping, and cultural experiences.
If more visitors started their day in Te Anau instead of Queenstown, they’d also have more time for their journey. This would require massive investment in Te Anau, a far less attractive drawcard on the tourism map than Queenstown, including more accommodation and use of the airport, and an enhanced recreational centre.
Fewer vehicles would also mean less congestion. If most visitors took a zero-emissions bus from Te Anau that stopped at the spots of interest, there’d also be less noise, less pollution, and fewer safety risks on what is a steep and winding road.
The main attraction would still be at the end of SH94, with views of Mitre Peak. But there’d be an enhanced visitor hub there along with a host of new attractions: a cable car and walkway to a new lookout at Bowen Falls, upgraded infrastructure including hydroelectricity, a new walkway to Barren Peak, as well as a new Visitor Centre, a rebuilt Milford Hotel, and a new earthquake-proof building for worker accommodation (the area lies on the Alpine Fault, which has a 75 per cent chance of uplifting in the next 50 years, with an 80 per cent chance it would be at least a magnitude 8 earthquake).
The master plan also wants to ban cruise ships, which block key views and spew smog into the air, and to phase out fixed-wing aircraft while replacing the runway with revegetation and walkways; it takes up a third of the space but is used by only 5 per cent of the visitors. Instead there’d be more helipads.
If that all sounds like expensive wishful thinking, that’s because it likely is; the costs have been estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
That doesn’t make it impossible, though. Controlling access would be key. Everyone would need a permit, including workers, recreational users and tourists domestic and international, which the latter would pay for. A fee of about $100 a day could raise about $70m a year, so all the new developments could be “regenerative tourism”, or self-funded.
Kantar survey research last year showed 79 per cent support among overseas visitors for being charged an access fee, as well as a willingness to pay between $90 and $110, though Australians thought a fee between $50 to $90 more reasonable.
The survey also showed broad support for the master plan, including among three-quarters of New Zealanders and 91 per cent of foreigners.
There was “strong” opposition to cruise ships, though where people stood on axing the runway was “unclear”.
What the minister doesn’t want
Tourism Minister Matt Doocey has no such absence of clarity.
“For a starting point - and I’m still to receive the report in June - my view is I don’t support the position of banning fixed-wing planes, I don’t support the option of banning cruise lines, and I don’t support the option of restricting vehicle access [by having the majority of visitors use buses],” he told the Herald.
“For me, it’s more about how we provide choice to support the better flow of tourists within the Milford Sound area, because primarily the issue seems to be around the congestion of tourism at certain times.”
The fact the MOP has proposed these is an indication that “what the MOP has been trying to achieve has sometimes been a bit incoherent, and that does concern me”.
So how would he deal with congestion? He agreed with the MOP proposal of pre-paid parking tickets - and people driving in could be sent a message when all the spaces were full.
Certain people heading in to do certain activities could still drive in, such as NZ Alpine Club members heading to the club hut near the Homer Tunnel. (Disclaimer: the author is an NZAC member).
“But if you were looking to go on a boat - which is what a large portion of people do - then the next choice would be whether they hop on the bus at the entrance to the National Park, or they could turn around and seek to buy a parking ticket for the next day,” Doocey said.
“Other people might choose to avoid that by using a full tour service from Te Anau or Queenstown.”
There are only so many possible car parks at the waterfront, so this option would still see most visitors taking a bus, according to Goddard.
“There isn’t the land. The number of car parks at the moment feels like it’s using about as much space as they’ve got available [about 325 parks].”
Goddard noted such systems are already par for the course for many supermarkets and airports, and they’re used in National Parks overseas. At Zion National Park in the US, for example, almost all visitors park in the closest town, Springdale, and jump on a bus. Recreational users who wish to park in a particular spot to access a specific part of the park can ask for a special permit.
“People are used to the idea that when it’s full, you turn up later or you go a different way,” Goddard said.
“Buses are one of the most effective ways of getting people there, and they take people off the road. Applying that to Milford Sound - Piopiotahi, where we have a limited amount of land, it feels like it’s a very feasible idea.”
‘Never get everyone agreeing to everything’
Goddard won’t bite back when told about Doocey’s “incoherent” comment: “It’s not my role to talk about what the boss’s boss might or might not have said.”
But he said there was plenty of time to tailor the June report towards anything ministers might specifically want to be looked at.
“All going well, the ministerial advisory group and the ministers will have a few sessions to talk through. We’ll make sure that if the business case comes together, it’s got the things in it that the ministers feel they need to have in focus.”
Doocey is one of three ministers in the delegation - the others are Transport Minister Simeon Brown, and Conservation Minister Tama Potaka, who is the lead minister - to receive the MOP report in June and take it to Cabinet.
Potaka wouldn’t say whether he agreed with Doocey, saying only he was looking forward to seeing the feasibility report. Brown declined to comment.
The MOP work has already gobbled up millions of dollars of Government funding, the first of which was allocated under the previous National-led Government in 2016, and Doocey is concerned about the possibility of not much happening at the end of it all.
There was also the context of the Coalition Government cracking the whip over public sector savings.
“We’ve got years of deficits ahead of us and - quite rightly for any business or family in that position - you cut your cloth to your budget,” Doocey said.
It’s not a particularly enviable position for Goddard, given how hard it is - impossible, even - to have an outcome where everyone is a winner.
Queenstown operators are already bristling at the potential loss of tourism dollars to Te Anau, while the Kantar survey showed more than a third of Te Anau residents would be concerned their town would take on some of Queenstown’s problems in becoming too expensive to live.
Queenstown-based operators reliant on Milford Sound flights also worry the changes might send their businesses under. Air Milford for instance, has just invested in new 12-seater Cessna Caravans, each costing more than US$3 million, and each with a per-passenger carbon footprint of less than half that of a helicopter.
It’s a concern among other Milford operators, even if there’s no reduction in visitor numbers.
Rosco Gaudin, who runs Rocso’s Milford Kayaks in Deepwater Basin, has described the proposed worker accommodation building as a “prison block” which would be a “death knell” for business.
“The staff turnover will be horrific,” he told The Listener. His staff accommodation includes an open, comfortable, sandfly-proof communal area that enables a thriving local community.
Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA) chief executive Rebecca Ingram said some operators had been there for 50 years, and though she supported the MOP work, it was caveated with “as long as the industry are partners in how that is developed”.
Closing the runway would be “certainly concerning”, but she stopped short of saying it should be kept.
“That’s why we’re very strong advocates - where we’re getting into the detail on what the ramifications are on some of those ideas - of really engaging with the industry behind where impacts would be felt the greatest.”
‘For our kids, and our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren’
Goddard gave assurances that was already happening, with a summary of all feedback published on the MOP’s website. Key themes from a recent public meeting, for example, include a need to “protect this community e.g. a single staff accommodation building isn’t feasible”, and “more people on coaches from Te Anau makes sense”.
Goddard: “We are taking the time to make sure that those impacts on tourism operators, on recreational users, on the community, on the environment can be clearly laid out.”
The fate of proposals such as the runway and the worker accommodation block remain open, he said, adding that everyone isn’t going to agree on everything all of the time.
He stressed that, ultimately, it will be up to ministers.
Even if the Cabinet opted for transformational change, nothing is likely to happen quickly. Charging foreigners on a state highway, for example, would require new legislation. Another idea - a new statutory body in charge of a number of governance roles for the area - might also require a new law.
Whether that is feasible is still part of ongoing work, which Goddard said was looking at finishing 10 to 12.5 per cent (or about $1.5m) under budget.
The MOP was also diving deeper into how much to charge international visitors without deterring a visit.
“It’s all well and good for us to do a survey where they said, ‘we’re willing to pay this.’ The ministers will want us to lay those options out and have good confidence that we’ve got those numbers right,” Goddard said.
“We are looking for an option that really does allow a win for the economy, a win for the environment, a win for the people in the community, and a win for culture; this place is a lot of treasure for Ngāi Tahu, and the Ngāi Tahu footprints in the place are not at all visible at the moment.
“We also need to make sure that there is meaningful money for conservation so this iconic place is there for our kids, and our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren.”
Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery and is a former deputy political editor.
(Disclaimer: The author is an avid climber, NZ Alpine Club member and regular visitor to Fiordland for climbing.)
