It’s Tuesday, and the caretaker period is keeping Wellington quiet. Four items.
thl’s lease on the Waitomo Glowworm Cave ends on 30 June 2027, and it has told shareholders to expect half its tourism profit to go with it
The Waitomo Glowworm Cave is owned by the Ruapuha Uekaha Hapū Trust, and Tourism Holdings has run it under a 30-year lease that expires on 30 June 2027. At Friday’s annual meeting thl said it is in discussions with the cave’s owners about what its role in the attraction could look like after that, that the talks are ongoing, and that its guidance has not changed: it expects earnings before interest and tax from its New Zealand tourism division to fall by about 50 percent from the 2028 financial year as a result. Newsroom, reporting on the negotiations this morning, puts the profit at stake at $6 million and quotes a Waitomo local who thinks the trust should run the cave itself.
thl keeps everything else it operates in the village. It said it intends to carry on running the Ruakuri and Aranui cave tours, The Legendary Black Water Rafting Co. and the Waitomo Homestead whatever the outcome. That matters, because the New Zealand tourism division, which also holds Kiwi Experience, has been the group’s best performer on return on funds employed “for some time”, in thl’s own words. Losing the anchor attraction while keeping the satellites around it is an unusual position for any operator.
The lease runs into the takeover too. Both bidders for thl, the BGH Capital consortium and Indie Campers, lodged revised offers last week, and whoever wins will be buying a Waitomo business whose main attraction is due to change hands by mid-2027. For the wider industry the bigger point is the precedent. If the hapū trust takes over operation of the Glowworm Cave, the country’s best-known cave attraction would move to Māori management at the end of a commercial lease, and every inbound operator with Waitomo on an itinerary will want to know early who they are contracting with from July 2027.
Source: Tourism Holdings, 2026 annual meeting materials (NZX), Newsroom
Stat of the day
50%
The fall in New Zealand tourism division earnings that thl expects from the 2028 financial year, once its lease on the main Glowworm Cave runs out. (Tourism Holdings)
Air Niugini gets its licence a week before flying Port Moresby to Auckland for the first time since 1998
Air Niugini received its international airline licence for New Zealand operations on Monday, the PNG Post-Courier reports, clearing the way for its return to Auckland after more than a quarter of a century. The airline last flew the route in 1998. The new service starts on 17 November with three return flights a week on Boeing 737-800s, leaving Port Moresby on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and Auckland on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Air Niugini plans to move the route to its Airbus A220s next year as they arrive. The start date has already slipped twice since the route was first scheduled for June.
Chief executive Alan Milne has said the schedule was built to connect in Port Moresby with Air Niugini’s flights to Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila and Tokyo. That is the part worth watching. The capacity is small, and most of the early traffic will be Papua New Guinean business, students and families, but a one-stop routing from Manila or Tokyo through Port Moresby is a genuinely new option for travellers who would otherwise connect through Australia.
Source: Post-Courier, PNG Business News, AeroRoutes, schedule
The Whale Trail gets up to $12m to reach the Picton ferry terminal, but most of it is conditional
Announced on 3 November in the last week of the campaign, and not covered here at the time: Transport Minister Chris Bishop and Tourism Minister Louise Upston committed up to $12 million to connect the Whale Trail directly to Picton. The 170-kilometre walking and cycling trail runs down the coast to Kaikōura, but riders coming off the Cook Strait ferries currently have to climb out of Picton on State Highway 1 among the ferry traffic, a stretch Bishop called “tricky”. The fix is a new section of trail out of Picton alongside the railway and a bridge over both the highway and the Main North Line.
Only part of the money is firm. Up to $1 million from the Regional Infrastructure Fund pays for NZTA to investigate and design the bridge, and $4.4 million from the Infrastructure Reference Group programme goes to the final section of trail into Picton. The remaining $6.6 million is ring-fenced for building the bridge, subject to the design work, confirmed costs and further government decisions, which will now fall to whichever government forms after the election.
The tourism logic is straightforward. A trail that starts at the ferry door can be sold to walkers and cyclists arriving from the North Island without a car, and Upston pitched it as a reason for visitors to stay longer across Marlborough and Kaikōura.
Source: Otago Daily Times, The Press
SH82 into the Mackenzie and Central Otago loses its last century-old bridge and its load limits
NZTA has finished the new Waihao North River Bridge on State Highway 82, the Hakataramea Highway in South Canterbury. With the Elephant Hill Stream Bridge already open since May, both bridges on that stretch have now been replaced. The old structures were more than 100 years old and carried load restrictions, which the new two-lane bridges remove. NZTA says both were delivered within budget and ahead of schedule.
SH82 is a quiet road, but it links State Highway 1 to the Mackenzie Basin and Central Otago, and self-drive visitors use it as an inland route between the coast and the lakes. Having it fully open without temporary bridges or weight limits before the summer traffic is a small, useful win for the region.
Source: NZ Transport Agency release via Scoop
Coming up
- 11 November: Princess Cruises’ 2028/29 Australia and New Zealand season opens for sale (Australian time)
- 14 November: Contractors start on the Hahei Beach Short Walk reroute
- 17 November: Air Niugini’s first Port Moresby to Auckland service
- 20 November: TranzAlpine runs Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass only until this date
- 22 November: Three Singapore services in a day at Christchurch, 1,560 seats on the route
- 25 November: Stats NZ’s supplementary population tables; Havelock marina community drop-in
- 27 November: Official general election result due from the Electoral Commission
- 28 November: Air New Zealand’s first Christchurch to Tokyo Narita service
- 30 November: Air New Zealand’s first Christchurch to Perth service
- 1 December: Paid parking starts at Cornwall Park, Auckland
- December: Reserve Bank’s next OCR decision
- Early 2027: MBIE resumes the Tourism Electronic Card Transactions series in place of the paused regional estimates
- 6 February 2027: Waitangi weekend deadline for user-pays at 33 Mackenzie toilet facilities
- 7-9 May 2027: Supercars at Ruapuna Raceway, Christchurch
- 14-16 May 2027: Supercars at Taupō International Motorsport Park
- 30 June 2027: thl’s lease on the Waitomo Glowworm Cave expires
- 1 July 2027: New Border Processing Levy rates take effect
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.