The season was brilliant, Dunedin Railways chief executive Rebekah Jenkins said.
"It has been better than expected, which is awesome. We’ve had a really bumper season. Obviously, we’re not going back to pre-Covid levels because we’ve been dead too long for it to be there yet," she said.
"I’m pleasantly surprised at how great the season’s been, and a lot of that has to do with cruise ships. We had a lot more passengers on our trains, which is awesome."
Statistics showed the company had carried about 9000 cruise ship passengers and overall had 34,000 passengers for the year so far. The statement of intent was for 35,000 for the year so the company was not far off reaching that.
"Trade is starting to come back now that they know we’re alive and breathing."
There were also a lot of independent travellers, people coming from all over the world.
Australia was a big market and the flights from the Gold Coast were also having an impact as people from the Gold Coast were getting on the trains.
She was off to a couple of trade events over the next few days to remind people Dunedin Railways was back and operating.
An increasing number of cruise ship passenger were booking the train trip directly off the boat, coming into the city and catching the normal train.
A big hit with passengers was being able to walk over the Deep Stream viaduct.
"They walk across the viaduct and then the train comes across the viaduct and allows our guests to take photos and videos, which is super cool. So that’s massively raved about by everybody who gets on the train.
"It’s a beautiful photo and it’s a lovely walk over the viaduct and as we understand it, there’s nowhere else in the world that does something like this. So we’re pretty, pretty lucky."
