Tourists bypass Rotorua following Qantas demise

Overseas tour groups are already bypassing Rotorua because they can't fly to the city directly from other tourism centres following Qantas New Zealand's demise.

Rotorua has already missed out on about 500 visitors since the airline folded, according to Agrodome managing director Warren Harford.

It was a potentially disastrous situation for local and national tourism that had to be sorted out quickly, he said.

While efforts to retain flights between the major centres continued, there were major concerns the tourist and provincial routes would not be adequately serviced, said Mr Harford, who is also the vice president of New Zealand's Inbound Tour Operators Council (ITOC).

The implications for tourism locally and nationally were huge, he said.

"There's already been a series tour out of the United States which has cancelled in Rotorua because they can't fly directly here from Queenstown and they're considering pulling the whole series out of New Zealand."

Origin Pacific was unable to fly the whole US group, of about 40 people, to Rotorua with its 19-seater aircraft, so Rotorua was being missed out altogether.

Such package tours were negotiated with airlines and it was not possible simply to change airlines.

Mr Harford said Asian tourists often come to Rotorua from the South Island, and they are struggling no to get flights.

"They have to fly to Auckland, bus to Rotorua and bus back to Auckland again to catch their international flights, and its dropping their stay in Rotorua from two or three nights to one."

About 75 per cent of the Agrodome's business was tour groups and it would be the same for most other tourist attractions within Rotorua city. Most of those groups flew between destinations.

The airline's situation had had an immediate impact on Rotorua and operators in other centres also stood to lose if New Zealand was no longer on tour operators' agendas, Mr Harford said.

Because of the potentially disastrous effects of groups being unable to fly to Rotorua, ITOC would support whatever efforts were made to lobby airlines to ensure proper servicing of the regions, he said.

And lobbying had started with Tourism Rotorua fronting talks with the airlines.

He doubted Air New Zealand would be able to cope if everyone simply switched to its regional services.

"People's holiday time is getting shorter and shorter and they can't afford to spend three days on a bus to get here. This situation needs to be resolved very quickly."

- DAILY POST (ROTORUA)