By New Zealand is considering ways to transform its key tourism industry amid concerns that a flood of visitors is damaging the environment and stretching infrastructure.
The industry has been battered as a prolonged closure of the border shuts out foreign visitors, requiring continued government support, Tourism Minister Stuart Nash said in a speech to an industry conference in Queenstown on Friday. Mass-scale international tourism is unlikely before 2022 even as the government is working to open a safe travel corridor with Australia this year, he said.
“The long-term picture for tourism once borders reopen requires more fundamental change,” Nash said. “We cannot go back to the tourism model that existed prior to Covid-19.”
New Zealand sells itself to foreign visitors on a clean, green brand, but recent reports have highlighted how the flood of tourists can damage the environment and over-crowd key attractions. Before the pandemic, tourism was the economy’s biggest foreign-exchange earner and employed about 10% of the nation’s workers.
