'Lonely Planet' has warning for South

Hordes of tourists visiting the South Island are affecting the environment, the Lonely Planet has warned.

The travel guide's first book concentrating on the South Island said booming tourism was having an impact, noting campers' shampoo in Catlins creeks and droning planes in the skies above Franz Josef and Queenstown.

It said locals were avoiding large chunks of the island because of the number of tourists.

However, the guide also trumpeted the South Island's beauty, saying it won "hands down" when it came to the great outdoors.

"Truly wild places are rare in today's world but the South Island delivers them in droves: fiords, sounds, glaciers, cloud-topping mountain ranges, remote islands, raggedy peninsulas and wide river plains.

"There are wild few places on this not-so lonely planet as pristine diverse and staggeringly good-looking."

In an unusual change, Lonely Planet also commented on New Zealand's politics, saying the country had recently opted for the "ebullient right wing" Prime Minister John Key.

"Under Helen Clark's no-nonsense guidance, NZ continued with its pacifist anti-nuclear policy while retaining troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unemployment plummeted, the arts bloomed and the domestic economy was kicking goals though the world's economic crisis cast a shadow over the Labour government's final year.

"The challenge for John Key will be to maintain NZ's prosperity during a period where the country is being impacted by an economic recession."