Wanaka adventure tourism company, Wildwire, is offering a product as ‘Koha/Pay What You Can’ to domestic tourists now that Level 2 has been announced.
Wildwire originally offered a 'Koha Climb' to the local community which according to Mark Morrison, Wildwire Managing Director, was a brilliant success.
"We have had such an overwhelming response to our Koha Climb, that we wanted to extend the offer to others through-out the country," says Mark.
"We have all been affected hugely by the COVID-19 outbreak that we wanted to offer people the chance to get out there and have fun once they could do so safely.
"We certainly won’t be turning a profit with this campaign, says Mark, "but what it will do is provide enough to pay our guides a wage that wouldn’t have otherwise been there and the cashflow will have a positive knock-on affect on the rest of the community too as people start to move around again. I mean who wouldn’t want to enjoy a cold one after a day outdoors!"
Wildwire operates the world’s highest waterfall cable climb near Wanaka and has been operating for four years.
COVID-19 has decimated the once thriving Tourism Industry in the Queenstown Lakes region.
Mark is positive about the future though
"We see that a phased approach to moving through the alert levels as the perfect opportunity to firstly be able to offer our product to a local market at a price that will work for them, which we have done.
"And now that travel restrictions under Alert 2 have been reduced, we can open this up nationally.
"We plan to keep the pricing low and be extremely grateful for the business that we can generate from our supporters in both our community and country wide.
"Then when international visitors finally arrive again, we will, hopefully, have 4.5 million advocates who will help share the love for this region."
