Queenstown could be in for its best winter ski season this year, thanks to an expected influx of mainly Australian visitors, NZSki executives told a seminar in the resort yesterday.
Chief executive James Coddington and sales and marketing general manager David Ovendale, who recently returned from a 10-day reconnaissance trip across the Tasman, said despite the economic downturn, all the "noise" in Australia pointed to a boom season ahead.
"We are absolutely fizzing with anticipation that the winter of 2009 will be the best ever," Mr Coddington told a crowd of more than 120 representatives of Chamber of Commerce and the ski and tourism industries.
NZSki owns Coronet Peak and the Remarkables skifields, plus Mt Hutt in Canterbury.
The pair pointed to several advance indicators to support their positive predictions. - An increase of 104% in online bookings with NZSki.com on the corresponding time last year.
The weak NZ dollar creating a more attractive exchange rate.
Confirmed ticket sales from people cashing in on cheap transtasman airfares.
Significant marketing spend by Tourism NZ and Air NZ in Australia.
Unrest in Fiji and Thailand, making them less attractive destinations.
Ski-pass costs frozen at 2008 prices.
Niwa predictions of the coldest winter in many years.
Actual figures for the 104% increase in bookings - for ski passes, car and equipment hire, ski lessons and holiday packages - would not be made public because they were commercially sensitive.
Both men acknowledged they were being deliberately positive in spreading their message of good times ahead, because they wanted "the whole of Queenstown" to hear some good news.
"Let the rest of the country dwell on the doom and the gloom.
"We've got a tremendous opportunity here.
"We're Queenstown, we're different," Mr Coddington said.
He also had a blunt message for service providers in Queenstown - do better.
"Hand on heart here . . . we call ourselves a world-class resort but we don't always deliver world-class service."
Mr Coddington said the biggest competition for Southern Lakes skifields were Australian ski resorts, which had an active local pool of 1.1 million skiers and snowboarders, compared with about 200,000 in New Zealand.
In the past 10 years, about 60,000 to 80,000 Australians had come to New Zealand but he had a "personal goal" to get those "stagnant" figures up to 100,000 this year.
Australian tourism organisations were trying to get Australians to holiday at home under the "no leave, no life" campaign, based around the Government's $900 stimulus package payments.
But he believed it was not working, pointing to the thousands of $29 Sydney-Christchurch airfares already sold by Jetstar.
The June 10 launch of Jetstar's domestic services in New Zealand was also seen as crucial.
