In what is being described as "the perfect storm" of snow and school holidays, resort hospitality businesses are attempting to balance staffing constraints with meeting the sudden increase in demand.
Restaurants and bars are consistently at full capacity, some having to turn people away, and accommodation providers are seeing bookings go through the roof.
Fat Badgers Pizza Bar owner Matt Marsh said his restaurant had seen “amazing numbers” in the first 10 days of the Australian school holidays.
"We’re just [being] smashed.
"We’ve got queues down the footpath ... it’s tremendous, the amount of people ... I thought I had enough staff, but no, I don’t."
Despite having to limit opening hours, offer a smaller menu and close intermittently, due to staff isolating, Mr Marsh said the pizza bar hit full capacity "as soon as we open the doors".
While he said inflation had to be taken into account, the venue was up about 10% on day-by-day turnover compared to pre-Covid.
The Cow owner Mal Price said his customer numbers were also similar to pre-Covid levels, but despite the demand, the venue could not operate seven days a week.
"We’re shutting five lunches a week and one night a week because we just can’t staff it up."
Good Group Hospitality chief operations manager Hamish Klein said the group operated five venues in Queenstown, including Botswana Butchery and White + Wong’s, which were having to shut two days a week due to staffing issues.
"We try to fill the venues up before we turn anyone away.
"Occasionally when we have sickness, that does put pressure on, and we have to adjust accordingly."
Mr Klein said if they were able to fully staff the venues, patronage would be close to what it was in 2019.
"But we really need the borders to open fully to really get back to where we were and, of course, we really need the working holiday visa people to be able to start coming in."
Relaxaway Holiday Homes business manager Jenny Parkes said it had been a record month for bookings in the short-term holiday accommodation market.
The business was up 125% on booking revenue this month compared to July, 2019.
"We were expecting it to be a busy winter ... [but] the demand and the volume of bookings and the value of the bookings — it's really exceeded our expectations, so it’s a good feeling after a tough two years."
She said the demand was strong right through to the start of summer, already.
Destination Queenstown chief executive Mat Woods said it was wonderful to be welcoming visitors back, and, so far, the visitor experience was positive.
