Too Many People Are Going to New Zealand

New Zealander here. Out of all the problems a country could have, 'too many tourists' seems like an awfully good one.

I'm sure it's more complicated than this, but from a naive perspective, putting a higher tax on tourism activities for non citizens seems like a solid solution with no obvious pitfall.

I travelled through New Zealand for many months, and there were parts that I loved about the country. There were also parts that I really didn't like that seemed to be all about a culture which exists there which sees travellers as easy to take advantage of.

As a hiker, I was lumped into a category of travellers called "backpackers," which created frequent distress. The street crime is very real. I was victim of an attempted robbery (luckily I got out on the better end of it, somehow), being charged different prices from locals, being given an enormous fine for sleeping in my car when I was sick and tired with a broken phone, and felt it was unsafe to drive any further. I also found erroneous over-charges on my credit card from two NZ businesses that I spent countless hours disputing until they were removed, and spent many nights in shabby, unprofessional hostels with undesirable staff.

The whole thing was a lot different than my experience backpacking around Europe when I was younger.

However, the nature is really incredible, and relatively unspoiled. There is so much to see in such short distances, and it's one of the best places in the world for hiking. The international culture is wonderful. I made friends from all around the world. Some NZ'ers are incredibly friendly: I was invited into people's homes, given meals and I hitch hiked around the South Island without any incident or problem (I somewhere read (cannot verify) a conspiracy theory that hitch hiking in the US was always relatively safe, but the CIA/FBI created a campaign against it).

That said, many of the most famous and attractive places to visit in NZ were overwhelmingly packed with tourists. Milford Sound in February felt like I was in Beijing. Tongariro was swarmed with too many tourists doing the crossing, all lining up in file one-behind-the-other. Wanaka and Queenstown were a disaster, just too many people.

The worst problems were not even in the Bloomberg article. All of them seemed to have stemmed from working class New Zealanders who had hard-working lives that saw backpackers as an easy target.

I've been travelling on a road trip in NZ for the last month or so (with a few more weeks to go). Even now, tail end of the summer season, the country is packed.

I like to drive around with just a rough route, see a place I like and stop for a while, but that just hasn't been possible if I want somewhere comfortable to sleep. Motels are mostly very small (6-12 rooms) so there's not a lot of availability. I've had to book in advance (and have a super-flexible route, skipping some full towns and even regions) to be able to get anything at all.

There's chronic under-investment in hotels and motels. It doesn't look like much (outside the cities) has been built since the 60's and 70's. It's like if the US never built Holiday Inn Expresses, Hampton Inns and so on and was just relying on mom-and-pop downtown motels to house everybody, or if there were no Premier Inns in the UK and it was still just seaside B&B's.

That does give what little accommodation there is more character with a more personal service, but it's still mostly poor quality and a tiny number of rooms. With some motels (luckily a minority) it's been clear that the near 100% occupancy all the time means they just don't care, somebody will rent the room however bad it is.

I don't think it would be much different with a motorhome or camping, official campsites look full and unofficial campsites are everywhere (and many of those campers do trash the place, giving campers and tourists a bad name and building some real dislike of them in the country).

There are also a few high-profile cases of tourists driving on the wrong side of the road (or just badly) and causing accidents and deaths.

The growing (and very understandable) anti-tourist feeling in NZ should correct the problem in the long run, as tourists feel less welcome and tell their friends that.

It would have been better if the government funding for attracting people to NZ (too fast) had instead been spent on infrastructure (including help with building brand-new motels).

It still seems like one of those "good problems". Hotels and guides will be able to charge more. Government should definitely look at park fees based on usage and investing in infrastructure.

> “If we don’t fix these things and look to the long term, we’ll be putting a cap on our own growth,”

It always saddens me when I see comments that assume unlimited growth is a good thing - and not an opportunity to consider the pros and cons of managing growth, especially of things like tourism.

We've all been to places that are 'unspoiled' and can understand the interest in keeping them that way. We've also all been to places that are almost exclusively populated by tourists. I'm sure some people enjoy the sensation of being in those places (vendors perhaps) but anecdotally I find it rare that people rate those experiences higher than the former, or wish to revisit those types of places. This suggests we have an understanding of the value of controlling tourism growth.

One of NZ's most famous walks - the Milford Track - already has some significant constraints (presumably to maximise the walkers' enjoyment and to minimise the damage to the environment). During the season, you can only walk the track in one direction, maximum 40 people are allowed to set off each day, etc.

The headline above says "Too Many People Are Going to New Zealand", but the article is actually about "... Tourists overwhelm New Zealand". Perhaps the title needs flagging, because tourists are only one of three main sources of people going to New Zealand. International students and immigrants also go to NZ, and are both also quite large business sectors. Education, like Tourism, is also one of the top 5 earners for NZ, with many flow-on effects in the economy such as pushing up the cost of rental accommodation. And Immigration (including returning former residents), while officially not national revenue but part of the country's "capital account", is huge, pushing up the prices of houses to astronomical levels, especially in Auckland. We need a story about whether there's too many people going to NZ that deals with all human arrivals in NZ, not just tourists. And I suspect it would reach the same conclusion.

I guess we can thank the LoTR franchise for making New Zealand a 'must visit' place. I've visited (and loved) the North Island a few years back, but never done the South Island.

Last year, a group of us old high school friends wanted to book the Milford Sound 1 week trek to celebrate our 50th year on the planet, but found out it was booked out 2 years in advance! Speaking to people who have done it over the years, it seems that 10 years ago, you could do the walk and never see another soul, but nowadays it seems to be a veritable rush hour jam (a bit like the snake line of climbers on Mt. Everest it would seem).

But I do hope that the economic flow through is good for them. I recall that even on my last trip there, we stayed at B&Bs and Farm stays and in talking to the locals, they were quite negative about the dismal economic conditions. But equally strangely, there seems to be a lot of good startups and IT related companies coming out of NZ over the past 10 years (Xero etc.)

I guess the NZ tourism commission will have to make hay while the sun shines. I live on the edge of Kakadu National Park here, and remember back in the heyday of 'Crocodile Dundee', we had the same huge influx of visitors from all over the world keen to see it, but of late, the demand has fallen significantly, which is probably better for the park, but not for the hotel and safari operators out there. Luckily they didn't overextend their infrastructure investments, which could be a lesson for other countries.

Want less of something, raise prices.

With the rollout of the Dreamliner and budget long-haul airlines, I would expect this trend to continue. Even if it is a bubble, would solving this problem not also improve infra for residents?

I guess there is a danger in building facilities that are only useful to tourists. Perhaps they should invest in hotel rooms that are either:

1) clustered near universities so that if tourism does collapse, they can be converted into dorms.

2) Easy to merge two rooms, add some fixtures, and create studio/1bed apartments.

As a Kiwi, what catches my attention about this discussion is that "raising the standard of living" in pure economic terms is still a primary political campaigning tool in NZ.

How do you measure the great things we already have and value that aren't so easily shown on a balance sheet and can't be shown on an emotive graph that trends up towards the right hand side?

The voter supported political agenda (whichever party it comes from) seems to often involve economic activities that don't hold to the long term values of the average Kiwi or the things that the rest of the world love our country for but we're temporarily blinded by the prospect of a shiny new car so make concessions in the short term.

I love the fact that so many people want to come and enjoy our home, but please understand that NZ is this way at least in part because we haven't focussed on growth at all costs. It may not always be this way.

A big factor in auckland at the moment ( especially around the time of this story ) is we have a big housing shortage, it's the start of the university year with many students looking for places to live, and a lot of hotel/motels being used while people look

I visited New Zealand 9 years ago with 2 friends for 3 weeks in late November, early December. We visited on our own both North and South islands with the mandatory ferry crossing from Wellington to Nelson. We stayed in backpackers and drove a few hours a day and did short hikes during the day. I almost liked every bit of it, especially the South island, you can see beautiful and diverse sceneries doing only short distances. Tongariro crossing was already packed. That being said it is a very long journey from Europe, not sure if I'd go back there again (now that I visited it). For fjords I have been told that the Norway's ones are more impressive. For lakes, pristine forests and glaciers, I preferred the Canada's ones (Banff National park). And for Alpine sceneries, well I know live in South of France and there are comparable sceneries with large plateaus dominated by snowy mountains, it is just wilder in NZ.

The cropping of that graph seems quite lurid to me. On the first sight, it looks like tourism is twice as big as predicted, which is not even close.

By the title "too many people are going to New Zealand", I assumed it was about immigration. NZ seems like a great place to migrate to but the catch is that you need an offer letter from the employer first and there aren't any employers around (at least I am unable to find one) who are gladly hiring overseas candidates.

I did the Tongariro Alpine Crossing track in winter, and it is like as photographed. Apparently in the summer (when you can see the coloured pools) it is super congested - back to back backpackers.

Going skiing in NZ this year. From Australia it is actually cheaper than skiing in Australia, even including flying there.

We do have AirBnB here don't we? I wonder how they're doing...

EDIT: It's a serious question. With the rise of tourism, and seemingly lack of accomodation, are they doing any better in NZ than they have in recent years?

It's just like anywhere else. There are too many people and naturally they want to go to the nice places.

Clearly they just need to tax Peter Thiel's income.

I was born in NZ but the family moved when I was 2. I recently got NZ citizenships by descent for my kids because I want to give them the option to move to there if all hell breaks out in the world. It's probably the last place on earth that one can still drink pure water right out of a lake. I choose not to move back there as an adult due to the isolation but if climate changes or wars happen then this isolation becomes a positive.