But what else might the Government's proposed tourist tax pay for?
That is the question on the mind of Lake Wanaka Tourism chairman Mark Morrison, attending the Trenz conference in Dunedin, where Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis was yesterday reported as saying a tax on tourists could be in place by early next year.
Mr Morrison said the tax idea raised the interesting question for Wanaka of what tourist-orientated infrastructure was actually needed.
"People say, you've got to fix the infrastructure. It's terrible."
But Mr Morrison said when he asked what needed fixing, "the answer they usually had was, `I don't know. You've just got to fix it. It's hopeless"'.
Mr Morrison hopes some of the answers may come at a series of tourism strategy meetings in Wanaka next week, involving Lake Wanaka Tourism members and other stakeholders, such as the Department of Conservation.
"I really want to be able to get that answer and then be able to take that to the [Queenstown Lakes District] council."
Mr Morrison said his organisation had "really good" lines of communication with the council and the region's business and tourism organisations and could be an advocate for how the tax was spent.
"We will see some money coming in that will hopefully start to ease the pressure that the community's feeling.
"You would hope that as the money is collected it is easily available on a proportional basis, so somewhere like [the Queenstown Lakes district] will have a good share of it."
Foreign tourist numbers to New Zealand rose to 3.7million last year from 2.5million in 2008.
Mr Morrison believed New Zealand had been "caught out" by the upsurge but people were now "trying to address the issues".
"It is bad, but people are trying to fix it.
"There's a lot going on."
Mr Morrison has been chairman of the Lake Wanaka Tourism board, representing 470 tourism businesses, for about 10 months and said board members were volunteers who were passionate about Wanaka, not just their own tourism businesses.
However, the organisation could not control the number of tourists coming to the town.
"So we can either put our heads in the sand and moan about it or try and find out what the issues are and act on them."
Mr Morrison expected any public input to a tourism strategy would be via the Wanaka Community Board.
