That was the message from Tourism New Zealand chief executive Stephen England-Hall to industry operators at a roadshow event in Queenstown this week.
Mr England-Hall told a packed room at the Heritage Hotel "there’s no bag of money that’s going to come over the mountain" from the government, and they had to adapt to the reality of domestic tourism for the forseeable future.
He was seeing a growing realisation among operators they "just need to get on with it", rather than hold out for a reopening of the borders.
"Because we just don’t know when that is."
The New Zealand and Australian governments were continuing to work on a transtasman bubble, and he predicted that when it eventually happened, people would be highly motivated to travel.
His main message for resort operators was to "build your business around what we know today", ensure their product, pricing and promotion were resonating with their target market and "have a plan ready to go" for when international tourism resumed.
