Tourism operators reporting strong summer season
The busy visitor season is once again boosting the Golden Bay economy. The long spell of settled weather has seen visitor numbers hold up, and local businesses catering to the visitors are experiencing strong demand.
Capital Air has scheduled 25 per cent more flights between Takaka and Wellington and is achieving the same loadings as last year.
"We discovered that lots more people would have booked with us last year but they couldn't get the return flight they needed," said Richard Molloy the co-owner of Capital Air. "We put on more flights this year, so the plane and our pilots are busier. Around 40 per cent of our passengers are repeat business. We've got a solid core of regulars and that's growing."
Richard said that despite predictions to the contrary, the international visitor numbers are holding up.
"We can only judge by the origin of our credit card sales," he said. "About 15 per cent of them originate from overseas and that's the same as last year."
Jan Dissel from Anatoki Salmon is having another busy season. Halfway through his November-March busy season he is on track to exceed last year's record number of visitors.
"We've certainly been helped by the good weather, but last Sunday was too hot," said Jan. "Our figures show that our overseas visitors are coming in the same sorts of numbers as last year. We've been busier overall so have taken on extra staff this year. We've got one extra full-time and two or three extra casuals. We're really lucky with our staff; we've been able to employ excellent local people."
Jan said that the "welcome" sign, to which visitors are invited to add a greeting in their own language, now has 25 languages represented.
Gail MacKnight from Cape Farewell Horse treks said that their visitor numbers were similar to last year's.
"We had just over 500 visitors last January and we'll do just under that this year," she said. "We've had some exceptionally busy days. About 50 per cent of our customers are overseas visitors. Many people don't realise that we've got 24 horses out here so we can cope with lots of people. We've been very busy in the settled weather. The scenery out here is so spectacular we like to take people out on days when they're going to be able to enjoy it at its best."
Neil Wilson
