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Speaker 1: Right now. The government's hopeful that digital nomads will soon

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Speaker 1: flood into the country and help grow our economy, but

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Speaker 1: the Finance Minister, Nicola Willis last night couldn't say how

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Speaker 1: many we can realistically expect here. Brad Olsen is Infametric's

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Speaker 1: principal economist, Brad good Evening, Good Evening, do we have

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Speaker 1: any idea how big this market is?

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Speaker 2: Look, it is pretty tricky to pin it down. There

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Speaker 2: are some global estimates that suggest you could be talking

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Speaker 2: in the range of thirty five to forty million digital nomads,

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Speaker 2: and perhaps around I've seen some estimates of around seventeen

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Speaker 2: million American digital nomads, and that's probably the groups that

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Speaker 2: we're targeting a little bit more, because that's certainly the

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Speaker 2: area where there's a bit more money. We've already been

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Speaker 2: seeing some very strong inflows of American tourists into New

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Speaker 2: Zealand since the end of sort of pandemic restriction, so

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Speaker 2: that certainly seems to be an area of focus. However,

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Speaker 2: with all of those numbers, I can't tell you how

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Speaker 2: many we might expect would actually come to New Zealand,

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Speaker 2: and that of course is still a pretty important number.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, basically it's too hard to quantify, isn't it? And

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Speaker 1: I guess the other thing is don't they normally go

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Speaker 1: to countries that would have a cheaper cost of living

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Speaker 1: like a Bali or Southeast Asia somewhere like that, or

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Speaker 1: do you have different demographics within that code.

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Speaker 2: I think you could probably have both. I mean, in

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Speaker 2: broad terms, looking at this, I'm not sure that we

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Speaker 2: can lose a lot from this policy in general. You know,

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Speaker 2: it might not be huge, but we're just sort of

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Speaker 2: not sure. But at the very least, if it's supporting

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Speaker 2: more people coming into the country and generally a lot

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Speaker 2: of these digital nomads, if they're able to think about

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Speaker 2: working overseas, they are, a lot of demographics suggest they

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Speaker 2: are often in sort of higher pay brackets that do

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Speaker 2: have a bit more money to spend. And I think

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Speaker 2: there's sort of probably two groups here. The first group

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Speaker 2: is those who are, let's be clear, probably already doing

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Speaker 2: it without knowing that perhaps they shouldn't, and so we're

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Speaker 2: now enabling them to continue doing so that's great. We've

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Speaker 2: also i think, put a bit more of a spotlight

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Speaker 2: on the opportunity to come to New Zealand. You look

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Speaker 2: at them over the last twenty four hours since the

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Speaker 2: announcement has come out, there's been a lot more talk.

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Speaker 2: There's been articles published, I think in the New York Times,

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Speaker 2: some of it coming across from the UK. So this

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Speaker 2: is probably a little bit less for the New Zealand audience,

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Speaker 2: more for the global audience going hey, look, New Zealand

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Speaker 2: is very very openly trying to court people to come here,

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Speaker 2: and if people were already thinking of coming for a

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Speaker 2: trip to New Zealand, this now might sort of put

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Speaker 2: us on the map a bit more. You're right that

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Speaker 2: in some areas, some other digital nomad visas do often

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Speaker 2: provide a longer time period or have cheaper cost of

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Speaker 2: living in similar I think this is more trying to

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Speaker 2: add on top of or convince people who already perhaps

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Speaker 2: thinking of a New Zealand trip to definitely do that,

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Speaker 2: or perhaps to come longer and therefore spend more money

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Speaker 2: in the country. So I'm not sure if there's any

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Speaker 2: real downsides this policy in the short term.

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Speaker 1: Interesting all right, Well, I mean if there's no real downsides,

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Speaker 1: I guess why not do it? That's probably the ethos

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Speaker 1: that's running through the beehive at the moment. Brad thank

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Speaker 1: you for that, brad Elson Infometrics principle economist. For more

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