Fox Glacier’s tourism badly hit by border closure of New Zealand

Saturday, August 7, 2021

New Zealand’s Fox Glacier has long been an internationally renowned tourism attraction.

Located on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand, Fox Glacier township, as well as the nearby Franz Josef, own spectacular scenic views of snow mountains, glaciers and temperate rain forest. Around three to four-hour drive from renowned Queenstown and Wanaka makes the remote town always ski tourists’ alternative for winter adventure and relaxation. The local economy is extremely reliant on tourism, especially international tourists.

However, Rob Jewell, CEO of Fox Glacier Guiding, is deeply concerned about the cancellations of booking after the eight-week pause of Trans-Tasman travel bubble implemented in late July, usually the golden season for businesses of Fox Glacier township, a remote and small tour destination in New Zealand.

To date, thanks for the booming of local tourism, the remote township witnessed four times more domestic tourists coming in the past half year. The operating capacity of Jewell’s company, however, remained only 10 percent of the pre-COVID period.

“This year, we cannot see any good signs before October due to new COVID outbreak in Australia,” Jewell said.
Jewell’s company started operation in the 1970’s and is one of the regional leading touring companies. Jewell felt that if his company is struggling for survival, it may be even more difficult for many others.

The winter season booking rate of Li Shuanwei’s motel, which has more than 30 rooms, used to be over 80 percent. But this year due to the latest lockdown in Australia, Li lost all the international bookings from Australia.
“Merely only one room was booked in one day in the past month,” Li said.

Besides poor business, Li also mentioned the soaring living expenses in such a remote town.
“As a motel runner, I need to have someone do the linen service from Wanaka every fortnight. But since COVID, the service price rose by 15 percent. Everything is getting more expensive,” Li said.

“My neighbours left one by one. Fox Glacier has turned into a ghost town now.”
A survey launched by the Glacier Country Tourism Group, a regional marketing group in Westland, shows that in the past year, 73 percent of 103 businesses in the Group reduced their staff. All together 519 jobs were reported lost. At least 68 businesses and an additional 195 jobs will likely be lost in the next six months if there is no changes on the border control or no additional support from the government.

Before the pandemic, Fox Glacier township had around 250 residents. Now the number has plummeted to 160.

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