Fares paid by Dunedin's cruise ship visitors for the Taieri Gorge Railway have been criticised as "highway robbery".
The Otago Daily Times yesterday found some United States tourists paying up to $NZ250 each for half-day return train excursions from Dunedin to Pukerangi, followed by afternoon city bus tours.
The charges were more than double the $72 return fare to Pukerangi advertised on the Taieri Gorge Railway website and the city tour fare advertised on the Dunedin Heritage Tours website, which ranged from $20 to $35.
The higher fares are set up to a year in advance by international cruise ship operators, before being marketed to passengers as they booked cruises or once on board.
For the Taieri Gorge Railway - owned by the Dunedin City Council - the fares mounted as fees and margins were added by the train company, the inbound tour operators marketing them to cruise ship operators and, finally, the cruise ships themselves as they sold to passengers.
Tourists disembarking from their train trip at the Dunedin Railway Station yesterday had mixed feelings about the higher prices.
United States tourist Marcia Wogstad (60), of Chicago, said she tried to book her trip independently online, but a lack of local knowledge meant it was easier to book through cruise ship staff.
She and husband Bill (61), a retired banker, arrived in Dunedin on the cruise ship Millennium, and together paid $US270 - $NZ500 - for the Pukerangi trip and bus tour.
"We are more upset with the cruise company because it's a gouge and we know it . . . It was a lovely trip. It really was. But I would have preferred giving the money to people that were running it," she said.
The issue was raised when Dunedin city councillors expressed concern at ticket prices paid by tourists for the Taieri Gorge Railway trip during a finance and strategy committee meeting on Monday.
Cr Neil Collins, speaking to the ODT yesterday, said the costs were "bloody highway robbery".
Cruise New Zealand chairman Craig Harris, of Auckland - who represents cruise ship companies and tour operators - said the companies were simply offsetting reduced boarding prices.
Such "ancillary earnings" were a common practice at ports round the world, Mr Harris said.
"People know they are paying over the odds to go on a shore excursion . . . That's discretionary spending. No-one's twisting their arms to make them pay."
Taieri Gorge Railway chief executive Murray Bond acknowledged his company charged tourists more, but said the fees covered additional operating costs and track access fees for the tourist service to Port Chalmers.
The fee - which he would not divulge - for the four-hour trip to Pukerangi was less than double the usual $72, but was inflated by the "enormous" costs added by inbound tour operators and cruise ship companies, he said.
Margins also appeared "higher than normal" this year, partly due to the slipping value of the New Zealand dollar against the US dollar since excursion prices were set last year, he said.
"The high margins this year are significantly hurting the number of people doing shore excursions in New Zealand.
"The cruise ship companies probably need to look extremely carefully at how they price their shore excursions next year," he said.
However, he feared complaining too loudly to the cruise ship companies could be counterproductive.
