At the past election, over-tourism was a hot topic.
Infrastructure was groaning under the weight of millions of visitors each year, their camper vans and rental cars clogging up roads and camping in places they shouldn’t be.
Communities railed against the possibility of more international flights, bringing in even more visitors to towns already struggling to keep up.
The number of overseas tourists peaked at just over 3.9million visitors in late 2019, having more than doubled since late 2001.
The counterpoint to those concerns was, essentially, be careful what you wish for. Many jobs in places such as Queenstown were both directly and indirectly supported by tourists, from hospitality to public transport.
If tourist numbers dropped, locals would take a hit, they were cautioned.
Nevertheless, nobody expected the international tourism tap to be turned off almost overnight.
Enter Covid-19.
The tourism industry was the first to be affected by border closures aimed at keeping the virus from our shores.
Economic analysis from ASB predicted the hit to New Zealand’s economy from the closure of our borders to be in the region of 3% to 5% of GDP.
Unlike for a lot of other sectors, parties have been more ambiguous on their tourism policies.
Part of that is the amount that has already been spent to prop up businesses.
It’s also difficult to predict what the future holds, when decisions on reopening borders to some countries and domestic demand are still so up in the air.
Labour seems to be relying on the strength of its Covid response to date.
Tourism spokesman Kelvin Davis said the Government had moved to "cushion the blow" since the early stages of the pandemic.
On top of broad-based support like the wage subsidy, the Government agreed to a $400million tourism recovery package.
The biggest chunk of that was the $290.4 million strategic tourism assets protection programme, which included dedicated financial support to 130 tourism businesses, 31 regional tourism organisations and 26 inbound tourism operators.
"We know further investment will be required once border restrictions begin to lift, but in the meantime I’m confident our $400million package lays the foundation for tourism to recover and continue to be a key part of New Zealand’s economy," Mr Davis said.
But both National and Act New Zealand want private businesses to be able to become approved managed isolation providers.
National also wants to investigate streamlined travel arrangements for low-risk countries and territories.
It also proposes a $100million tourism accelerator package of direct grants for tourism projects, aimed at increasing demand for tourism.
The grants would not be aimed at covering current operational costs. Rather, they would fund any new component of an enterprise aimed at driving increased or new demand for tourism.
Act leader David Seymour, announcing his tourism policy in Te Anau, questioned "why can’t we allow high-end tourist resorts under strict rules in isolated locations to bring in a plane-load of rich Americans on the proviso that they stay put for two weeks."
He believed New Zealand should treat tourists from countries with a low risk of Covid-19 differently — for example, shorter quarantine times.
He also wanted to scrap the $35 international visitor conservation and tourism levy and return the proceeds to tourism businesses based on their 2019 GST receipts.
