Lockdown stalled any chance of rental cars being allowed out, with only essential travel permitted.
It has meant the fleets of rental cars usually seen around Otago have been parked up.
Act Now Car Rentals owner Norm Fagg, of Queenstown, said it was a question of waiting.
“It has done everything it possibly can to me. I am just a one-man band.”
He said he had two cars out when lockdown was called and one car was stranded outside Christchurch, with the Swedish renters intending to fly home when possible.
Act Now has a fleet of 35 cars, which would normally be in high demand.
"All the people I had have cancelled, so I have no future revenue in the foreseeable future."
He said Alert Level 2 would enable him to get back to work, but he questioned who would be able to afford to rent a car or go away, with many in Queenstown potentially losing their jobs or having reduced income.
Related Stories
Comments
A sad summary of the destruction of our NZ economy. We will soon be asking our 'leaders' why is NZ's outcome so much worse than say Sweden and Taiwan? especially once random sampling for the virus is done.
This is why the roads have been much more pleasant. In the future there should be a limit put on rental car numbers. 500 sounds ample.
Or could it be that no one was allowed to travel, including Kiwis?
From the photo, It is actually sad that tourists are allowed to rent such old vehicles, another one of the issues the McDonald's approach to tourism has created, additional old vehicles of low ANCAP rating being kept on our roads.
Are we looking at the same photo? All I see is cars that are newer and probably better serviced (ok, that's an assumption but we like assumptions round here, right?) than the majority of cars I see on our streets.
The end of the car rental industry will be one of the benefits of Covid 19. Tourists can travel on buses and use proper toilets instead of trashing the country and endangering people on the roads.