The Milford Opportunities Project is exploring ways to do tourism differently at Piopiotahi and along the Milford Rd corridor.
One of the key concepts for the Milford Opportunities Masterplan is a proposal to restrict access to Milford Rd via a permit system, where New Zealanders could self-drive, but international visitors would need to use an alternative transport system.
As part of the project, a survey was recently carried out on about 4900 foreigners from key markets such as Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China, Japan and India, as well as 1000 New Zealanders.
The survey sampled both visitors who plan to visit in the future and those that have already been.
It showed 72% of surveyed New Zealanders and 87% of international travellers liked the concept of managed access/transportation with Te Anau as a visitor hub.
The survey also showed 79% of international visitors supported paying an access fee and 86% of New Zealanders agreed Milford Sound Piopiotahi was a New Zealand icon.
Speaking to the Otago Daily Times yesterday, Milford Opportunities Programme director Chris Goddard said the survey gave them a good understanding of people’s feelings.
"The international visitors thought that a hop-on hop-off bus [service] and potentially slowing down the journey, and looking out the window rather than looking at the road, was a good idea, and [would be] a good experience.
"That was a good insight and really helpful to us putting out a tender and exploring what a bus network looks like."
He said it was still early to talk about the feasibility of the proposal.
"We are not transport experts, we do need the expertise from the tourism industry ... and some transport experts [to see] how it works," Mr Goddard said.
"The master plan talks about the hub being in Te Anau, and the Southland District Council is creating a development plan at the moment to help us understand what the community would like in a hop-on hop-off bus and where they would want it to be."
He said some operators suggested Knobs Flat as a good location for the hop-on hop-off services as well as the park and ride location.
"We do need to explore that as well."
Mr Goddard guaranteed those systems would not affect the ability of travellers to explore important tracks and sights in the area.
"The ‘hop-on hop-off’ bus term is describing how buses [would] continue to go by — so if you want to spend an hour at Mirror Lakes, you can, or if you want to spend 10 minutes there you can, as there’s another bus coming through afterwards that you can get on.
"It’s not [about] getting on one bus and staying on that same bus all the way to Milford Sound."
They would work with the tourism operators and with the community to ensure how this idea might be feasible and then present that back to the ministers in June next year, he said.
At the moment, there is no legislation in place which would allows a ban on New Zealand roads for foreign drivers and any move to do so would have to be determined by the government.
