When their flight home to the U.S. from Auckland was delayed last month, a group of 53 elderly American tourists was put up in a traditional Maori meeting house for the night because all the city’s hotels were full.
The visitors were welcomed by an elder, given biscuits and a cup of tea before being shown to their sleeping arrangements -- mattresses on the floor of the tennis court-sized hall adorned with Maori wood carvings.
“We were joking with them that it was a bit like being young again at an American holiday camp,” said Jenny Nuku, treasurer of the Maori community center, called Te Puea Marae. “They all were laughing.”
While the alternative accommodation made for a unique cultural experience, it illustrates how New Zealand’s tourism boom is stretching infrastructure to breaking point. With 3.5 million short-term arrivals last year -- 480,000 more than had been projected only two years earlier -- a lack of capacity may end up harming the nation’s biggest foreign exchange earner.
Scenic walks across volcanic plateaus and through snow-capped alpine valleys are becoming congested, while small towns servicing adventure activities like jet-boat rides down surging rivers or guided walks across 7,000-year-old glaciers are finding their sewerage systems over-loaded.
“If we don’t fix these things and look to the long term, we’ll be putting a cap on our own growth,” said Quinton Hall, chief executive officer of Ngai Tahu Tourism, one of the country’s biggest adventure tourism operators. “We’ve got a natural cap on our peak period right now because we just don’t have the accommodation in New Zealand. Even if they wanted to come, they couldn’t find anywhere to sleep.”
No Room at the Inn
Tourist numbers jumped 12 percent in 2016 and are forecast to reach 4.5 million by 2022 -- almost matching the country’s current population of 4.7 million. Government research last year identified a likely shortage of more than 4,500 hotel rooms by 2025, after taking into account existing construction plans for about 5,200 new rooms.
Hotel occupancy in Auckland averages 94 percent in February and about 86 percent over the year, with the nation’s largest city frequently full.
“If immediate solutions aren’t found, it is unlikely we will continue to grow at current levels,” said Dean Humphries, national director of hotels at Colliers International. “If we are going to continue to see more tourists come into the country, where do they go?”