Nearly 200 wealthy New Zealanders could have stayed in Dunedin at the end of January if a boutique French cruise ship had received approval to enter the country for domestic cruises sooner.
The now-scuppered domestic tour, which was due to have left Dunedin on January 30, is estimated to have cost the country’s tourism sector $5million.
The luxury cruise ship Le Laperouse has now received conditional approval to restart operations in New Zealand waters for domestic tourists.
But the approval is valid from February and its first arrival in Dunedin is now due for March and is expected to be the only time a cruise ship enters Otago Harbour this season.
Cruise ship spending had been growing year-on-year in Dunedin, eclipsing $60million a year, until the end of last season was cut short by Covid-19, Enterprise Dunedin director John Christie said.
The cruise ship market vanished with the coronavirus and the loss of cruises was now compounding an overall loss of international visitors to the city during the global pandemic.
Before the pandemic the industry had become quite a significant part of the economy in both value and volume, Mr Christie said.
And the future of the cruise ship market was now mired in uncertainty, he said.
While the impact on Dunedin’s economy as a whole was not as dramatic as it was on centres more focused on tourism, those businesses tied to the sector had suffered dramatically, as Dunedin endured its third month of a cruise ship season without a passenger setting foot in, or spending money in, the city.
From October to April, Dunedin once hosted 130 ships and 250,000 passengers, but it could take years to rebuild to the market that existed pre-Covid, Mr Christie said.
"There’s so much uncertainty with international visitors at the moment; cruises are part of that," he said.
"Until we see what happens with those transtasman bubbles, those international markets are really unpredictable."
The cruise ship’s owner Ponant celebrated the company’s return to New Zealand waters yesterday after months of discussions with the Ministry of Health.
Ponant Asia Pacific chairwoman Sarina Bratton said New Zealand travel agents, tour operators, ground operators, airlines, port authorities, food and beverage suppliers, technical suppliers, fuel suppliers, service and waste suppliers all would benefit from Le Laperouse operating in the country.
But directors of the travel company that drew the company back into New Zealand said yesterday they were "very, very troubled" by the Government decision-making that led to the cancellation of the cruise ships’s initially planned January cruise.
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Boutique. Latest fashion.
Any cruise ship banned entry into our port has been nothing less but a very good thing.
Oh well, theres a few thousand tons of heavy fuel oil not burnt and there's a few thousand litres of diesel fuel saved. It seems 200 wealthy NZers have little understanding of what these ships cost the environment. Or is this climate change emergency and depleting fossil fuel reserves a myth?
Afterall, we're still advertising and buying big fuel burning utes in record numbers. Or is climate change something only the lower classes need to adapt to? Weren't we meant to be preserving the planet, it's climate and resourses for the future generations? Was that not the message? I would have thought the 'heady' days of unbridled tourism at any cost was over.
I hope we never have cruise ships in our port ever again. In fact I don't care if we never see tourists here either because so far we in Dunedin have had it safe and I would like it to stay that way. Boo hoo to the money merchants. It would only take one person off a cruise ship to bring in covid and our city and population is at risk of dying. So the wealthy businessmen , who probably don't pay any tax, can go cry into their crystal glasses of champagne and be grateful they are not dead.