The government signed a regional deal with Auckland on Friday, outlining various initiatives agreed between the government and the Auckland Council to ‘‘unlock the city’s potential, boosting economic growth and improving living standards across New Zealand’’.
Queenstown Lakes District Council had joined with Central Otago District Council and the Otago Regional Council to get a regional deal done with central government last year. The parties had signed a memorandum of understanding around the deal in July last year and talks had been continuing ever since.
Regional deals are agreements between local councils and central government, helping to address some of the current challenges faced by councils in areas such as growth and infrastructure. It is based on a 30-year vision and 10-year strategy.
When contacted yesterday, Queenstown Lakes Mayor John Glover said his thinking was the deal could be signed off by the end of April.
‘‘A huge amount of work has been going into it. A lot of staff time and plenty of resources have been put into the deal and we are getting pretty close,’’ he said.
It was now down to working out the framework and getting final agreements signed off before it could be announced.
Representatives of various government agencies such as the NZ Transport Agency, Health NZ and the Ministry of Education had been involved.
He said Tauranga was also looking at a regional deal and they may be next at signing it off but he said the Queenstown Lakes/Central Otago deal would be close behind.
In the Auckland document there was a small reference to an accommodation levy.
Under central government commitments, it said it would explore an accommodation levy in 2027.
Mr Glover said the bed tax was a very important thing to Queenstown but he did not know if it would be in the document or not.
If included, it would only happen after this year’s election.
In 2018, the Queenstown Lakes District Council proposed a $10-a-night bed tax on international tourists. It would increase over the following years and was said to fundraise $278 million in five years. The council said the tax was needed to fund roads and other infrastructure to help a place like Queenstown which hosts lots of tourists. The proposal did not find favour with the Labour-led government and when National came into power it was also not supportive of it.
National leader Christopher Luxon had initially indicated he was more interested in having changes for individual districts, more aligned to what each district needed. But he admitted in February the government may look at bed taxes if elected to a second term.
Mr Glover said the council had to find a way to fund infrastructure with the number of tourists arriving in Queenstown.
More than half of all international holiday visitors to New Zealand include Queenstown Lakes in their itinerary, and international passenger movements through Queenstown Airport exceeded one million for the first time in 2025.
While international holiday arrivals grew by an encouraging 6% nationally last year, Queenstown Lakes outpaced that trend with 11% growth.
