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Speaker 1: Tourism Stats release, we're reminded yet again of how far

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Speaker 1: short of where we need to be we actually are.

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Speaker 1: Visitor arrivals are still seventeen percent down on pre pandemic levels.

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Speaker 1: This is back twenty nineteen, for goodness. Like, there's some

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Speaker 1: growing angst as well around the cost of visas. Visas

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Speaker 1: are going up to three hundred and forty one dollars

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Speaker 1: visitors visa. That is, that's up by sixty one percent.

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Speaker 1: Tourism Holdings Incorporated CEO Grant Webster back, will this Grant,

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Speaker 1: very good morning to you. And you if you were

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Speaker 1: to guess where the tourism market is that from your

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Speaker 1: expertise and experience, would you say it is still down

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Speaker 1: on COVID you can seal it, see it, feel it.

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Speaker 2: Oh well and truly yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, we've

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Speaker 2: seen some good growth. I mean there's some growth still

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Speaker 2: to come, and the fear is definitely that we're losing

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Speaker 2: competitiveness on a global basis.

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Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad you said that because, I mean, we've

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Speaker 1: all talked about China, but China's an individual story. Australia

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Speaker 1: is at eighty six percent of what it was Britain

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Speaker 1: seventy three percent. Why aren't we attractive?

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Speaker 2: Well, I think I think part of it is the

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Speaker 2: is the marketing dollar, right. I mean, if you look

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Speaker 2: at tourism Australia in take the three big states South Wales, Victoria, Queensland,

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Speaker 2: they combine have got around eight hundred million and spend.

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Speaker 2: So that's that's on a per capita basis, that's like

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Speaker 2: fifty percent more than us in New Zealand, and we

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Speaker 2: are less than one percent, well less than one percent

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Speaker 2: market share and tourism on a global basis. So we've

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Speaker 2: got to be more competitive. We've got to invest, we've

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Speaker 2: got to get our money out there and show what

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Speaker 2: we're about and get people back. It's not going to

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Speaker 2: just happen, which is the sense I have at the

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Speaker 2: moment that people think, oh it's okay things, people will.

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Speaker 1: Just come exactly. So your argument is if we told

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Speaker 1: the story, we're still good enough to get the people here.

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Speaker 1: It's just we're not telling the story as opposed to

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Speaker 1: even if we told the story, they don't want to

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Speaker 1: come anyway.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think I think tourism, my view touris in

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Speaker 2: New Zealand is doing a good job of telling the

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Speaker 2: story with what they've got, they need some more. But

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Speaker 2: more importantly, right at the moment, we've seen a removal

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Speaker 2: of funding for events and events of what kept winter

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Speaker 2: alive apart from ski obviously, you know, we've issues with

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Speaker 2: the cruise industry for next year with boats not coming

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Speaker 2: through at the same extent. And then what we've seen is,

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Speaker 2: as you said, visitors costs going up, visa visitors going up,

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Speaker 2: working holiday visas going up even more, and threats of

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Speaker 2: IBL So it's time to put the foot on the

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Speaker 2: throt or, not on the throat, and let's let's fuel

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Speaker 2: the tourism industry, not block it.

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Speaker 1: So you argue the visa thing is material, it would

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Speaker 1: make a difference to people's decision.

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Speaker 2: It does demand e. Leicester City at the border is real.

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Speaker 1: Wow. See I'd argue differently based on the fact that

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Speaker 1: the dollars and the toilet Therefore, I mean, you take

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Speaker 1: your forty eight forty nine US cents and you can

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Speaker 1: get here. I mean that's not bad going. Are we

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Speaker 1: too expensive.

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Speaker 2: At the border? Every when we look at other countries

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Speaker 2: removing visa costs, and when we look at the relativity

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Speaker 2: of New Zealand to other competing destinations. That's the point.

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Speaker 2: They're not just going to come and pay whatever. They

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Speaker 2: look and compare, just as we do around the world. Right,

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Speaker 2: So it does make a difference. We end up being

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Speaker 2: four five hundred dollars more expensive than we were last week,

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Speaker 2: and it makes a difference.

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Speaker 1: Good insight. Grunt appreciate it very much. I'm wrong. I

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Speaker 1: apologize for that. I wouldn't have thought it was a major,

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Speaker 1: but clearly it isn't. He's an expert and I'm not.

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Speaker 1: So we'll need to talk to Erica Stanford, who's behind

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Speaker 1: all of that, of course, But when you look at

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Speaker 1: the numbers, Australier eighty six percent of what it was,

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Speaker 1: Britain seventy three percent, China fifty five, they're their own story.

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Speaker 1: The only people who are playing the ball or playing

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Speaker 1: the game of the US who are back to one

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Speaker 1: hundred and three percent and twenty nineteen, as I keep

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Speaker 1: reminding you, is now five years each and every year,

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Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, twenty twenty one, twenty three to twenty five. We're

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Speaker 1: losing each and every year. And it was our second,

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Speaker 1: if not our biggest foreign income earner.

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Speaker 2: For more from the Mike Casking Breakfast, listen live to

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