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Speaker 1: There are a number of things that stand out to

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Speaker 1: me anyway post COVID that are disappointing. Obviously, the recessionary

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Speaker 1: state this place has been in the carnage it's caused

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Speaker 1: continues to cause, although I think they're all ultimately tied

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Speaker 1: into the one major event, i e. COVID tourism, though

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Speaker 1: tourism stands out as the most clear example of something

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Speaker 1: we've had and something we've now lost. Not literally, they

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Speaker 1: still arrive, but not like they used to, my word,

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Speaker 1: not like that they used to. It not even closed.

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Speaker 1: Something happened between closing the borders and opening them back up.

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Speaker 1: Initially it was a time thing. Apparently it was a

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Speaker 1: capacity thing. The planes weren't back yet. But four years

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Speaker 1: on what some of us saw a couple of years ago,

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Speaker 1: and everyone now says the truth has been laid bare.

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Speaker 1: We are simply not up to it the way we

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Speaker 1: once were. But Queenstown in the general area that's back

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Speaker 1: plus some, and that's awesome, But nowhere else's we're marooned

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Speaker 1: at about eighty percent, and that doesn't count the gap

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Speaker 1: between the eighty and the one hundred percent plus it

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Speaker 1: could have been, should have been, and all those tens of,

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Speaker 1: not hundreds of thousands of people who should have been

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Speaker 1: arriving in these past few years. They went elsewhere. Because,

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Speaker 1: let's be blunt, it's not that the world hasn't been traveling,

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Speaker 1: just not here. Enter the new entry fee to the country,

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Speaker 1: it triples. It'll be one hundred bucks. As I'm sure

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Speaker 1: you're well aware, industry operators don't like it. I don't

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Speaker 1: blame them. See, doing it tough is hard enough without

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Speaker 1: heaping more cost on. I assume the government took that

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Speaker 1: into account. They defend it by comparing us to the

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Speaker 1: fees of other countries. But isn't that the point? We

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Speaker 1: aren't other countries, and the numbers show it. I still

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Speaker 1: want to argue one hundred bucks should not be a barrier.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you spend three grand getting here, as

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Speaker 1: one hundred dollars, what tips you over? But here's the

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Speaker 1: interescapable truth. Tourism, along with Derry, was the golden goose,

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Speaker 1: and we, if not wricked it, irreparably harmed it. I

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Speaker 1: don't see how making it more expensive improves our plight.

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Speaker 1: For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to

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Speaker 1: news talks. It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow

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Speaker 1: the podcast on iHeartRadio