While yesterday's border opening announcement means the bitter plight of internationally stranded Kiwis will finally end, the billions of dollars lost in export earnings and GDP from the absence of tourists and slow return of visa-based workers will continue indefinitely.
Hospitality NZ CEO Julie White says the requirement of self-isolation and some MIQ means there will be no tourists until 2023 at the earliest, and the desperate labour shortage will continue as the world will be slow to take up work visas here.
"It’s a bitter-sweet announcement; the emotional trauma of Kiwis stuck abroad ends, but the economic trauma will continue into 2023 and 2024," she says.
Hospitality staff will be among those New Zealanders now able to return, and long divided families of hospitality workers will reunite. But the announcement also means that tourists, essential to hospitality and many other sectors, are still at least a year from coming. Despite opening to work visas, the pace of uptake is far from certain.
"New Zealand is mostly closed for the rest of the year – or half-closed at best. The ten days isolation rule will stop almost any tourist visiting. We will miss the big tourism season and that could embed a pattern for years more of tourists going elsewhere.
"We might have more workers and Kiwi customers later this year, but right now many of our members aren’t even sure they’ll make it through summer," Juliesays.
She says the staged opening does little to assist the ‘cautious’ principle, as Omicron is already here and will arrive with returning New Zealanders
"The nation is vaccinated and boosted. What is the point of an isolation period longer than the international standard, and what is the difference between the influx of tens of thousands of returning Kiwis, and tens of thousands of tourists."
