Director Jane Hughes told the Queenstown Lakes District Council last week the Wakatipu Swim School was being blocked access to the pool despite acting as a consultant on its development since the 1990s.
Those fears were compounded when Lakes Leisure, which manages Aqualand on behalf of the council, announced it will be running its own in-house swimming school, for six-month-old to adult learners, from July 21.
Approached for comment by the Queenstown Times, both Mrs Hughes and Water Discovery owner-operator Emma Carpenter said they were unable to discuss their requests for access without the consent of Lakes Leisure.
Lake Leisure said all media inquiries had to go through board chairwoman Jane Taylor.
Attempts to contact her were unsuccessful.
Mrs Hughes told last week's council meeting her school wanted to reduce costs to the ratepayer by providing swimming lessons to district children and adults "and we want to do it now".
She said Aqualand could increase its revenue by granting access to community organisations such as her school, which would pay pool hire, plus encourage more than 100 swimmers who would pay admissions, each week.
"If I had 200 child swimmers, you multiply that by $3, plus pool hire of around 10 hours.
It comes to an estimated $600 per week, which is revenue for the pool."
She said she wanted to know how Aqualand excluding her swim school through bureaucracy was helping to meet one of its objectives of reducing costs to the ratepayer.
"Does Lakes Leisure really have the local knowledge to decide what is a community group or a commercial group?"Mrs Hughes said her business was community-orientated, taught more than 500 young swimmers last season and had nine teachers on staff.
Mrs Hughes was approached to help design the learners' pool in the mid-1990s.
She spoke at a public forum against building the 25m pool at a depth of 2m for the entire length.
The constant depth would deter many swimmers of all ages from using it, she said at the time.
The pool was eventually built so it graduates from 1.05m deep down to 1.6m and then drops to a flat 2m depth from a distance of 12.5m in.
The swim school is based at the pool at Queenstown Primary School and had assisted in installing a heat pump to make the pool usable for six months during the summer.
Applications for access to Aqualand close at 4pm today.
