‘Our destination is being undermined’

• Published date: 18 April 2024
• Publication title: Mountain Scene

Last week, Mountain Scene reported Act leader David Seymour’s added his voice to the chorus of government voices against the idea, instead promoting Act’s GST-sharing scheme, in which councils consenting housing would get half the GST back to pay for infrastructure, as a solution

Lewers says while he’s interested in that, and it would make a difference, ‘‘it only looks at growth in residents’’.

To the year ended September 19, 2023, though, the Queenstown Lakes District accounted for 11% of all guest nights in New Zealand, and 18% of all international guest nights; Queenstown accounted for 15% of all international guest nights.

Still lobbying Tourism Minister Matt Doocey, in particular, for a levy, Lewers points to the 2018 council-commissioned MartinJenkins study, which estimated if the proposed levy for the Queenstown Lakes was introduced at that time, there’d be about $125million extra in our coffers by now.

Over the first 10 years, it was projected there’d be an extra $1billion of international visitor spend in the district, with multiplier effects for the rest of NZ.

‘‘It’s a pretty small investment for a very large return,’’ Lewers says.

‘‘We’ve got an idea, or a proposal, that could provide an extra $1b of international spend in NZ, just in Queenstown alone ... but yet they don’t want to acknowledge it.

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