- we had to enter the MIQ lottery five times before ‘winning’ a spot. The lottery system is the same used by some shoe drops and ticket reservations, and there is no weighting given to citizens that have enrolled in previous lotteries.
- when you make it through the lottery and select a date, it has to match the date you arrive in NZ exactly. If flights only go to NZ on certain dates, and those dates are all taken, then you’re out of luck. Many people make it through the lottery only to find that there are no dates left that work.
- you are not told what MIQ hotel room or city you will be in until you arrive in NZ. At that point you may be flown across the country (adding and extra 5+ hours to the end of an international trip), and placed in who-knows-what hotel. You are charged a set fee for the hotel.
- at every stage of your stay at MIQ, the people running the show have the ability to prolong your stay if they believe there is any COVID risk. The morning we were packing our bags to leave, the hotel called to say we needed to stay in our room while they waited on an urgent COVID test for a suspected positive case. Had the result actually been positive, most of the hotel (everyone from our flight) would have needed to stay additional days.
- ‘famous’ people go through MIQ too. We met someone on the flight that plays the lead role in a popular TV series. Like everyone else, they were flown across the country and placed in a hotel room.
- the hotel food is usually not great. We were fortunate enough to be in an Uber Eats delivery area, so we ordered out a few times.
In regards to the linked article: the real problem, at least to me, is that New Zealand citizens with an urgent need to come home (visa, sick relative, funeral, etc) are not always able to do so.
MIQ is an interesting experience, and at least at the start of COVID it made it possible for NZ preserve a pre-pandemic way of life. Now that we’re years into COVID and vaccines are readily available, it’s extremely frustrating for New Zealanders with family or loved ones overseas. Public opinion is steadily shifting towards ‘open up the country’, and the government has announced some tentative dates for doing this (although they were recently shifted back due to omicron).