Tourists will start returning two years after the country was closed off by the pandemic, Justin Giovannetti writes in The Bulletin.
‘We’re ready to welcome the world back.’
For the first time since last year’s short-lived trans-Tasman bubble, vaccinated Australian tourists will be allowed to enter the country from April 13. Tourists from visa-waiver countries like the US, UK and Japan will follow on May 2. There will be no requirement to isolate on arrival, but all travellers will be provided with rapid tests and will need to swab on arrival and five or six days later. Unveiling the reopening plan, prime minister Jacinda Ardern laid out a rough sketch of what the future of travel to Aotearoa will look like. The Spinoff’s live updates covered the announcement.
It’s a relief for a tourism industry that now has a firm plan for 2022.
Tourism was New Zealand’s largest export industry in the pre-Covid world, accounting for over 20% of exports and billions of dollars in receipts. Tourism minister Stuart Nash warned that it could take five years for the industry to return to what it was, but he expects travellers will start flying soon. The opening with Australia coincides with school holidays there and the winter ski season that will follow here. The NZ Herald (paywalled) spoke with tourism operators who expressed enormous relief, but say they’ll still need government relief until big spending tourists from the northern hemisphere return.
Ardern said the country’s success during the first year of Covid has burnished its reputation and will bring more travellers: “We will be a sought-after market. We’re known internationally not just as clean and green, but now as safe”. New Zealand was added to the US government’s warning list last week because of the very large number of omicron cases here. On a per capita basis, Aotearoa has about 40 times more cases than the US right now.
Delay until later in 2022 for travellers from the rest of the world.
The opposition has been critical of the delay for reopening to non-visa waiver countries, notably India and China. The current plan is for travellers from those countries to return by October at the latest. As reported in the NZ Herald, those countries will need to wait. The reason given by the prime minister is delays at Immigration New Zealand, which doesn’t have the visa processing capacity yet to welcome tourists.
Gold-standard surveillance at the border: PM.
The situation for arrivals will echo biosecurity, according to Ardern. Any positive case from a rapid test will undergo genomic sequencing to keep tabs on new variants. It also seems likely tourists won’t need to worry about vaccine passes or mandates at restaurants during their travels as the prime minister hinted strongly that those restrictions could face an end at cabinet as soon as next week. The restrictions themselves could last a bit longer. RNZ has some details about the PM’s future plans. “The role of vaccine passes, once we’ve come through that first wave, changes,” said Ardern.