After another year of Great Walk tech issues, the Department of Conservation has revealed almost half of the trampers hoping to nab a space on the Milford Track were calling in from overseas.
There was great frustration again on Tuesday after 11,000 people logged onto the Great Walks booking website for 9.30am on opening day.
“Due to the patchy experience we decided to reset the system, which would have looked like a crash to some people,” said Cat Wilson, director of heritage and visitors.
Despite patchy performance and inability to place bookings during the first hour, the Milford Track was filled in 45 minutes after a reset at 10.30am.
There were around 7210 successful bookings for Milford, according to DoC’s booking team.
This is slightly higher than last year, with more bookings by solo hikers and smaller groups.
While some walkers were rewarded for their patience, waiting almost an hour for the website to restart, DoC has hinted that time is running out for their IT supplier after repeat issues.
A significant volume of traffic was from overseas, with international demand up 47 per cent on 2023.
There were bookings placed by trampers from 37 different countries.
Despite being charged an increased $130-a-night this year, international bookings for Milford were back to levels not seen since pre-Covid.
With international bookings making up less than 20 per cent of bunks since the pandemic, international visitors were back to more than 40 per cent of trampers for summer 2024/25.
The top markets for inbound Milford walkers was Australia at 41 per cent, United States at 24 per cent, then the United Kingdom at 7 per cent, followed by Germany and Canada at 5 and 4 per cent respectively.
Kiwi trampers have complained of being locked out of the Great Walks booking network. Photo / Thomas Bywater
But amid great interest from overseas, there was huge frustration at home, with Kiwi trampers complaining of being locked out of the booking network.
On the other end of the network, Lake Waikaremoana - which also offered the cheapest bunk rates at $32 a night for local and international trampers - was overwhelmingly booked by New Zealanders.
Ninety-three per cent - 5825 of 6332 bed-nights booked on opening day went to Kiwis, with plenty of availability left.
The next tranche of trails - Abel Tasman Coast Track, Rakiura Track, Whanganui Journey - opened to trampers on Thursday, May 30 without issue.
The Abel Tasman shows great availability even over the summer peak.
DoC said there were no reported issues with any of Thursday’s trails, after its IT vendor addressed a “database configuration issue” which was partly responsible for Tuesay’s tech issues.
“The remaining walks don’t quite get the opening day demand the Milford Track does, but they’re still very popular,” Wilson told the Herald.
“We are confident the system will cope with bookings for the remainder of the Great Walks, this and next week.”
Last April, demand for the Milford Track and other Great Walks caused a serious website issue that delayed the opening of the network by four months.
Earlier this year, a similar peak in demand for the Tōtaranui campsite, one of the most popular summer holiday sites in Nelson Tasman, took down the DoC website when it opened for bookings.
