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Speaker 1: Tourism sector, but worried about this barrier to regrowing numbers

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Speaker 1: post COVID because the government currently considering the cost of

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Speaker 1: our international visitor levy. A couple of options out there.

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Speaker 1: There's thirty five dollars, fifty bucks, seventy dollars, or one

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Now the claim is one hundred dollars could

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Speaker 1: strip a quarter of a billion dollars or visitors spending

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Speaker 1: from the economy. The chief executive of the Industry Association,

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Speaker 1: Rebecca Ingram, is back. Well, this Rebecca, very good morning

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Speaker 1: to you.

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Speaker 2: Good morning.

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Speaker 1: Any sense of where they sit thirty five to fifty,

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Speaker 1: seventy or one hundred, I don't have.

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Speaker 2: A sense of where the government's assessing. What What is

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Speaker 2: the case now is that it's thirty five dollars today,

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Speaker 2: So the international visitility is in place at thirty five

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Speaker 2: dollars and is delivering some benefits. My consume is that

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Speaker 2: it could be lifting as high as one hundred dollars

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Speaker 2: per person, and that, as you said, would strip an

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Speaker 2: enormous amount of money out of the economy. And our

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Speaker 2: assessment what means in real terms, because it's quite hard

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Speaker 2: when you're thinking about really big numbers I turned in

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Speaker 2: and seventy million dollars. What that actually means? It's seven

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Speaker 2: hundred and forty eight thousand dollars a day of visitor

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Speaker 2: spends that New Zealand might not be the beneficiary of.

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Speaker 1: Well, they would because doesn't it say it was one

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Doesn't one hundred dollars go into infrastructure for

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Speaker 1: the tourists and us all to enjoy.

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Speaker 2: Well, when people are thinking about a holiday, they're thinking

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Speaker 2: about affordability of that holiday. One hundred dollar IDL would

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Speaker 2: go on top of the other border fees and charges

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Speaker 2: that visitors are paying. Recently, we've seen visa fees go up,

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Speaker 2: and so someone who requires a visa coming to New

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Speaker 2: Zealand and an IDL of one hundred dollars would be

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Speaker 2: paying five hundred dollars with of visa fees and charges

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Speaker 2: before they've even spend a dollar in New Zealand.

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Speaker 1: How does that compair all other places? Are we expensive

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Speaker 1: at that level or not?

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Speaker 2: That would be expensive? And it also starts to put

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Speaker 2: up barriers to choosing New Zealand for the holiday. When

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Speaker 2: people are thinking about where they want to go on holiday,

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Speaker 2: they're thinking about all the different places in the world

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Speaker 2: they've maybe dreamt of going. One day, they're tossing us

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Speaker 2: up against Switzerland and Japan, at Canada and Australia. Then

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Speaker 2: they're thinking about their budget. Then they're looking at what

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Speaker 2: they can afford. And we think it's really important that

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Speaker 2: tourism isn't disadvantage by putting out barriers when those decisions

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Speaker 2: are being made.

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Speaker 1: Good agree more. Having said that, I was of the

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Speaker 1: view until I had grant Webster of tourism Holdings on

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Speaker 1: I was of the view, Look, if you spend a

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Speaker 1: couple of thousand dollars coming from Britain, right, and you're

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Speaker 1: going to stay in a hotel and you're going to

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Speaker 1: eat out every night and thinking, well, what's a couple

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Speaker 1: hundred dollars for visas? And yet he argues it's material,

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Speaker 1: and you would argue it's the same. It's a barrier.

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Speaker 2: It is material. It's when you are thinking about having

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Speaker 2: a holiday, you tend to have a budget. Some people

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Speaker 2: don't and it's lucky then, but most people do. And

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Speaker 2: when you're thinking about that budget, where do you want

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Speaker 2: it to be spent on experiences? How much money am

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Speaker 2: I going to have to do things to enjoy the

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Speaker 2: place I'm going to, versus border fees, charges, translating visa content,

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Speaker 2: all of these things that are being put in place,

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Speaker 2: Suddenly other destinations might look more attractive to you. And

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Speaker 2: that's the thing I want is to be really mindful

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Speaker 2: of when these individual decisions are being made.

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Speaker 1: Well argued Rebecca, appreciate it. Rebecca Ingram Tourism industry A

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Speaker 1: boss with us. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,

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