It’s Thursday, and the first day of the spring school holidays. The day’s news runs from the best free publicity a region can get to the least glamorous question in the industry: who pays to keep an attraction open. Here’s what’s moving.
Lonely Planet has named Dunedin and the Waitaki among the best places to visit in 2027
Dunedin and the Waitaki are the only New Zealand entry in Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2027, published this week. The list runs to 50 picks, split between 25 places and 25 experiences, and Dunedin and the Waitaki carry the Oceania slot among the places. Lonely Planet’s Oceania editor Jessica Lockhart told RNZ the pair were chosen because they show “the best of the quirkiness that New Zealand has to offer”, and that the judges were looking for places less travelled.
The case Lonely Planet makes is not scenery. It is a morning in a steampunk museum, an afternoon on a guided graveyard walk and an evening watching little penguins come ashore in Dunedin, and in the Waitaki Valley, running from Ōamaru up to Ōmarama, fossilised whale bones in farm paddocks and the country’s smallest wine region. Lockhart noted there is no guarantee New Zealand makes the list in any given year; the Wairarapa was the pick last year.
What a listing like this does is well understood by now. It lands in front of the independent traveller who plans a year out, which is exactly the visitor a region off the main circuit struggles to reach on its own budget. The harder part comes next: Ōamaru was told only this week that its airport’s future is in its land rather than its runway, and most of the Waitaki experiences named are small, owner-run businesses without much room to scale. The regions that have got the most from these lists are the ones that had the product and the beds ready when the readers arrived.
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Dunedin and the Waitaki are the only New Zealand pick among the 25 places in Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2027, and they represent the whole of Oceania. (RNZ, Otago Daily Times)
Source: RNZ, Otago Daily Times
Christchurch ratepayers will put $1.2 million into Orana Wildlife Park, against a $4 million hole
Christchurch City Council’s Finance and Performance Committee voted 13 to 3 on Wednesday to give Orana Wildlife Park $1.2 million in the second half of this financial year. The park faces a budget shortfall of about $4 million this year, and council staff described it as a structural funding problem rather than a cashflow one, with the park’s cash reserves forecast to run out early next year. An independent BDO analysis put the gap at $4.1 million for 2026/27, rising to between $4.6 million and $5.6 million a year for the five years after.
The money comes with conditions: a review of the half-year results against a long-term sustainability plan, the park staying open to the public, and Orana asking the Selwyn and Waimakariri district councils, the regional council, central government and the Rata Foundation to contribute. A move to ask the Government for immediate money from the international visitor levy was voted down, and staff will report back on how a regional levy could fund facilities like Orana.
The awkward line in the debate came from councillor Nathaniel Herz Jardine, who voted against and asked colleagues when they last bought a ticket. It is the right question, and not only for Orana. A $1.2 million grant covers under a third of one year’s gap, against a shortfall that grows every year after, so this buys time rather than a model. Councillor Jake McLellan said as much, warning that without other funders the money may simply delay the inevitable. Every region with a zoo, a museum or a heritage attraction that visitors love and locals rarely visit will recognise the arithmetic.
Source: RNZ, Otago Daily Times
Air New Zealand expects 850,000 people through the school holidays, with 150,000 heading to and from Queenstown, Nelson and Dunedin
Air New Zealand expects to carry about 850,000 customers between today and 11 October, a little over 520,000 of them on domestic flights and almost 330,000 internationally. Tomorrow is the domestic network’s busiest day, at more than 33,000 customers, with 2 and 9 October close behind. Close to 150,000 people are travelling to and from Queenstown, Nelson and Dunedin.
The airline has put more seats on the routes families use: 23 percent more between Auckland and Sydney than the same holidays last year, 10 percent more between Auckland and Queenstown, and 12 percent more between Auckland and Brisbane. It has added nearly 1,000 seats for the Bledisloe Cup weekend in Sydney on 17 October.
Read the split carefully. More than 170,000 of the international passengers are going to Australia, and most of the growth the airline highlights is outbound, New Zealanders leaving for the holidays. The domestic numbers are the good news for operators here, and Queenstown gets its share. The same figures arrive on the day of the airline’s annual shareholders’ meeting, where it will face questions about a $336 million pre-tax loss.
Source: NZ Herald
The airports want the next government to publish what is happening to domestic fares, route by route
NZ Airports, the industry association for the country’s airports, published its election manifesto on Wednesday, and it leads with domestic airfares. It wants a permanent, funded public monitoring programme covering fares, airline capacity, reliability and competition, reported by airline and by route, with particular attention to routes a single airline serves. It notes one airline holds more than 80 percent of the domestic market and most regional routes have only one carrier.
The association points out that the Civil Aviation Act 2023 already lets the Government require airlines to supply information on fare trends, passenger volumes and flight movements, and wants those powers used in the first year of the next term. Its other three asks are stable airport regulation, planning protection for airports’ future growth, and visa, border and digital-processing settings that support international services, citing the recent international flights at Hamilton and Dunedin.
The two sides of this argument are not new, and the airports are not a neutral party: fares and airport charges are one of the long-running disputes between them and the airlines. But the request itself is modest. It asks for evidence rather than intervention, and for anyone selling a regional destination that depends on a single route, route-level fare data would be more useful than anything currently published. The election is on 7 November.
Source: NZ Airports release via Scoop
DOC is choosing the next ferry operator for Tiritiri Matangi, and only one will get the wharf
The Department of Conservation has opened a request for proposals for the right to run a scheduled commercial ferry to Tiritiri Matangi, the open sanctuary island in the Hauraki Gulf. Under the Auckland Conservation Management Strategy only one operator can land a scheduled service at the island’s wharf. The current licence expires on 31 March 2027, and the new one will run for five years. Proposals close at 5pm on Friday 30 October.
A single-operator licence on a small island is an unusual commercial position: the winner holds the only regular way on and off one of the country’s best-known conservation sites, and the island’s visitor numbers depend on whoever runs the boat and how often. For DOC, the tender is where the terms get set, from frequency to fares to how the service supports the island’s volunteers. For operators, it is a five-year window that opens once.
Source: Department of Conservation
Coming up
- 24 September Spring school holidays begin, to 11 October
- 24 September Air New Zealand’s annual shareholders’ meeting, online at 2pm
- 25 September Air New Zealand’s busiest domestic day of the holidays, more than 33,000 customers
- 28 September SH11 Paihia drainage works begin under daytime stop-go, to 9 October
- 17 October Bledisloe Cup in Sydney
- 28 October The Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Review and OCR decision
- 30 October Proposals close for the Tiritiri Matangi ferry licence, 5pm
- 4 November New Zealand Tourism Awards, Te Pae Christchurch
- 7 November General election
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.