The Shoulder Season A daily read on New Zealand tourism

Friday 9 October 2026

Labour promises automatic refunds for cancelled flights, and a fairer go for small airlines at the airport

Labour takes aim at airline pricing, refunds and the airport kit that keeps rivals out, the Walter Peak fire is contained at about 1,350 hectares, Mt Hutt spends $12 million on a base that has run out of room, Piha's campground may never reopen, and didymo turns up in a remote Fiordland river.

By the Shoulder Season desk

Sand dunes under a cloudy sunset on the west coast
Photo by Petr Vysohlid on Unsplash

It’s Friday, four weeks out from the election, and the airlines have become a campaign issue. Five items. Here’s what’s moving.

Labour promises automatic refunds for cancelled flights, and a fairer go for small airlines at the airport

Labour leader Chris Hipkins and commerce and consumer affairs spokesperson Arena Williams announced an airline policy on Thursday with five parts. Airlines would have to show the full fare, fees included, up front. Refunds would be automatic when a flight is cancelled or substantially changed. Passengers would be compensated or reimbursed when checked bags are significantly delayed or a paid service is not delivered. Airlines would publicly report delays, cancellations and baggage performance. And smaller airlines would get fair access to airport infrastructure, so they can compete on regional routes. “When an airline screws up, passengers shouldn’t have to fight to get their money back,” Williams said.

The refund line goes further than it first sounds. Labour told RNZ it would cover cancellations caused by bad weather, though it is not proposing compensation for the wider costs a weather disruption causes. At present airlines only have to compensate for disruption within their control. Air New Zealand said it already rebooks customers automatically when a cancellation is its fault, with a refund or credit as an option, and offers a rebooking or credit for weather. It also said its website already shows fully inclusive prices and that it publishes monthly performance data, so much of the policy would make law of what the largest carrier says it already does.

The part with more bite for the regions is the last one. Consumer NZ chief executive Jon Duffy pointed out that airlines, Air New Zealand in particular, own much of the kit at the terminal, such as baggage carousels and boarding gangways, which lets an incumbent make life hard for a newcomer. Labour has not said how access would work, how “significant” a delay or change has to be, or how any of it would be enacted. Williams framed it as the answer to the government’s recent $5.7 million in regional airline grants, which she said leaves the barriers to competition untouched.

Stat of the day

About 1%

The share of Air New Zealand flights the airline says are cancelled for reasons within its control, the cases where it already refunds or rebooks automatically. (Air New Zealand, via RNZ)

Source: RNZ (the policy), RNZ (what it would change)

The Walter Peak fire is contained at about 1,350 hectares, and the investigation turns to the 30 September burn

Fire and Emergency stood its crews down on Thursday evening with the fire on Walter Peak and the neighbouring high country fully contained, after scorching about 1,350 hectares since Tuesday. That is a little under the 1,400 hectares estimated on Wednesday night, the figure this briefing carried yesterday. The vessel exclusion zone along the Walter Peak shoreline has been lifted, though some areas may smoulder and smoke for a few days and a further aerial inspection is planned for Monday.

A senior specialist fire investigator will now examine the cause and origin, including any connection to the controlled burn carried out at Walter Peak High Country Farm on 30 September. RNZ’s report does not say whether visitor tours to the station have resumed.

Source: RNZ

Mt Hutt spends $12 million on a base that busy days have outgrown

Mt Hutt, the NZSki field above Methven, will spend $12 million expanding its base area over the summer, with work starting after this winter and due to finish before winter 2027. The outdoor sun deck nearly triples, from about 430 to 1,300 square metres, and will be heated throughout. There will also be a new ground floor toilet block, heated access steps down to the snow, more storage for guests and staff, and an extra food and drink outlet to be named over summer. Bradfords Building of Ashburton is the principal contractor.

Manager James McKenzie said the field has become “gradually and consistently busier over time”. The season just gone made the case: the opening was delayed by two weeks, then a July storm brought close to a metre and the busiest day in a decade, with more than 10,000 people over the three-day Matariki weekend. The spending goes on the parts of the day that jam first when the weather is good, the deck, the food queue and the toilets, rather than on lift capacity. For Mid Canterbury it is also a summer of building work at the field and a sign the operator expects that growth to hold.

Source: NZ Herald, The Press

Piha’s campground may close for good, and the surfing nationals may go with it

Piha Beach Campground on Auckland’s west coast has been shut since early June, and Auckland Council staff are now advising that it close permanently. The site sits on a flood plain, part of it flooded in 2018, and a council report that year warned that future flooding could cost lives. An engineering report in August set out three options: reconfigure the site, relocate it, or withdraw from it. The Waitākere Ranges Local Board votes on 22 October, and the council says no decision has been made on the lease.

The knock-on is immediate. Surfing New Zealand had planned the Surfing Nationals at Piha in January, with about 350 entries, many of whom would have camped. It says running the event there without the campground is “highly unlikely” given how little accommodation the village has, and it needs a back-up plan. Manager Fiona Anderson, who has had no income for four and a half months and has already fenced off a third of the site beside the Piha Stream, hopes to reopen for Labour Weekend if the board allows it. It is the general problem of coastal campgrounds in miniature: the cheapest beds on the coast are often on the land most exposed to the water, and once a council has a report saying so, reopening becomes a liability question rather than a tourism one.

Source: RNZ

Didymo turns up in the Kaipo River, one of Fiordland’s cleaner rivers

A Department of Conservation survey has confirmed didymo, the invasive freshwater algae, in the Kaipo River in northwest Fiordland. Southland Fish & Game senior ranger Josh Tabak described the river as notable for its pristine state and important for both freshwater biodiversity and recreation, while stressing that most of Fiordland’s rivers and tributaries are still free of it. Didymo smothers riverbeds and harms the freshwater insects that native fish and birds depend on.

There is no closure, only a request. DOC and Fish & Game want packrafters, trampers, hunters and anglers to check, clean and dry their gear before entering Fiordland and every time they move between catchments, and to leave gear dry to the touch for two more days before using another waterway. With the summer walking and fishing season weeks away, that message is aimed squarely at visitors and the operators who equip and guide them, and DOC’s special conditions for freshwater users in Fiordland National Park still apply.

Source: Department of Conservation via LiveNews

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