great walks fees for foreigners up to double price

This isn't exactly a surprise as it was mooted and discussed probably six months ago I guess. My view hasn't changed I think it's a bad idea, much simpler to have modest border tax (which many countries have) with set % age to DOC. As for the economics it's cr@p, you can't double the price and expect the same amount of international visitors, I wouldn't pay $140 a night to do the Routeburn or Milford, there's plenty of other places to go. This could put more pressure on none GW tracks, or see some tourists skip all together, both will be less revenue not more, the latter significantly so.

@Kreig: I think it would be hard to have numbers for Europe as we don't have large national parks like in NZ but a combination of private lands, national parks, regional reserves etc. furthermore the alps for example are split between multiple countries. One thing I can say is that France is going to have 90 millions visitors this year, for 66 millions inhabitants. I don't know where you found that number for NZ but MBIE says 3.6 millions visitors for last year: http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/sectors-industries/tourism/tourism-research-data/international-travel/international-visitor-arrivals-commentary If you want to compare to NZ, this is 1.36 visitor for each inhabitant in France, vs 0.77 visitor per inhabitant for NZ, not 1.25 to 1. So yeah it's huge… but not that much compared to Europe. I can also reply to your question about funding… Huts in France are completely privately funded, either by individuals who own them or by local clubs. Local clubs can, like in NZ, apply for government and council grants, some do, some don't, to different degrees. So deducing the indirect level of govt investment in club owned huts would be a hard exercise, but having seen budgets of local clubs, the grants they get are usually quite small and don't make up more than a fraction of the budget. According to https://www.refuges.info/ there are 2383 huts in the European alps (some are free, some are not, some have facilities and food, some are just small cabins, a bit like NZ I guess). 180,000 km of tracks in France are maintained by a non-profit organization called "FF Randonnée". It is mainly relying on volunteers for track maintenance. I couldn't find its budget you have to be a member I think but it seems to be coming mostly from the 3,000 affiliated clubs and their members (about 5 millions € / year if you use the cost of the license and the number of affiliated individuals). In France national and regional parks are financed partly by the local councils, by the region, by the department and by the government, so it's quite hard to compare budgets with the DOC. For other places that are not protected parks France doesn't have an equivalent of DOC (I would say because we don't have anything left to conserve lol), but they have a national office of forest management (ONF), but it's also managing cutting forests for profit (40% of wood produced in France comes from there) so it's hard to deduce much from their budget as only 91 millions come from the government (out of a budget of 790 millions € in 2011, the rest is coming from the office commercial activites). So yeah, Europe is very different, as it is mostly relying on individuals through voluntary payment (either in huts or tracks) to finance hiking infrastructure. I think that it's great that NZ is financing DOC (and huts and tracks, which are great) with tax money, but I also think that it's not enough as it makes it too dependent on politics, leading to a rollercoaster of a budget, uncertainty, and bad management as a result of not knowing how much the budget will be cut the next year… So I'm all for users participating but I find that paying for access to national parks like in Australia is a better idea. As you said $44.45 per person is nothing, and I would much prefer having a simpler system where you only pay an annual/weekly/monthly pass and don't have to pay hut fees, as they represent a lot of added costs in handling the fees (ticket selling and collecting). Re. reciprocity: anyone residing in France for more than 3 months has free access to free public health insurance, including free dental care. That's far from being the case in NZ ;) (for the record, I find ACC to be a great idea, but it's not replacing a proper public healthcare as it's only for accidents)

Kreig, part of the policy is supposed to be raising more money, it'll be raising less of that, if tourists go elsewhere. And if it's still in NZ, but not Great Walks it will put more pressure elsewhere, and presumably some of those you're walking if you not doing a GW anytime soon. As it is the Te Araroa is seeing a significant amount of pressure in some areas, with precious little payback re: hut fees.

Not sure you'd need them everywhere @kreig. A toll gate (maybe automatic and invisible like the motorway ones) at the start of Milford Rd and either end of Haast Highway and one on the Mt Cook road should get 80% plus of those visiting the SI national parks. Prepurchase your annual pass against your rego number. Job done. I'd vote for someone who proposed tolling those roads with an annual pass system. And / or a bed tax applying equally from Jucy to XBase to Hilton (my preferred option if we really need more revenue from tourism)

@Kreig: not sure what you're talking about for visitor centres in Australia, I've visited most parks in Australia and except for Cradle Mountain in Tassie (which is an ugly place), most of the visitor centres are comparable to the ones you find in NZ. Furthermore, most parks don't have a visitor centres, and most entry points don't even have a fee collection box to pay, but just a sign saying you should have a pass to enter the park. This was the case in WA, SA, NSW and TAS. So I don't see how this can be an argument against paying for access to parks. And I don't see why it would be a bad thing to be able to do the TA on the cheap. This is great, tramping should be as cheap as possible so that more people can do it. $2000 is already a good amount of money, that's about 4 months of my budget when I cycled/bushwalked through Australia! And that included parks pass cost ;) Making great walks really expensive is just saying that some parts of the country are only accessible to the wealthy people, and it's disgusting for me. If access numbers is an issue, reduce the number of people there, just like they do in Tasmania on the overland, don't just use that as an excuse to make money and exclude people.

Why would it be BS? Pass fees are quite low, and free in NT and VIC. TAS is AUD 60 for 2 months for 2 people, so AUD 15 a month per person, that's nothing. SA is free for cyclists and hikers. But that's not BS, I can send you my monthly budget if you want. Cycling and tramping is cheap, you only pay for food, some camping sometimes, some parks passes, the occasional restaurant or cabin… But no home, no rent, no car, no insurance (except health insurance), no fuel, this is pretty cheap. And I own an annual parks pass, I'm a member of the auckland tramping club and FMC, and also a paying supporter of many local groups like Kaimai fund, tiritiri matangi etc. I've taken many people tramping, including many French, and none ever said anything against paying for the huts. So please keep your xenophobic ideas for you. I met many people who didn't pay huts, and most of them were kiwis… but I'm pretty sure most kiwis still pay for huts, so yeah you can't make a rule from an anecdotal experience. And I was talking about Cradle Mountain visitor centre, not the park, as you were talking about ugly visitor centres… It's basically an ugly car park with semi permanent buildings on the side of the road…

2 million tourists visit nz a year the rest are here on business or visit family or friends http://www.mbie.govt.nz/info-services/sectors-industries/tourism/documents-image-library/key-tourism-statistics.pdf

@Kreig, do Australian states have many tiers of classification other than National Parks? When I lived in Victoria for a few years, I had the impression that many (not all) of the National Parks were small and fragmented. If under NZ's legislation, I thought that maybe some of them might have been classified as some kind of Conservation Area or Reserve.

a lot of aucklanders seldom if ever travel south of the bombay hills and a lot of the people visiting them arent always going to be interested in anything more than visiting family and friends. a lot of them their only visit to conservation land would be to ski. a lot of asian residents are often not big on the outdoors., although Koreans are big on the outdoors and tramping and the Japanese can be. but the chinese seldom go beyond scenic lookouts or the comfort of their transport

A few loosely connected thoughts: 1. So, lots of people from lots of countries don't often engage with 'the outdoors' - can't disagree with that 🤔 2. Remember that Australia is a federation of states. It's State legislation that administers National Parks (as well as other classifications). So, different States, different rules. For example, Victoria has free access to all National Parks (although there can be camping charges). There are a number of state-level reserves including conservation and forest reserves. As well, local government can also declare reserves. Confused? 3 levels of government, 6 states, 2 territories - what would you expect? 3. For the record, many Australians (including me) do not support the Federal Government's refugee policies (amongst others). 4. Also for the record, as a foreigner, I commend NZ on the BC hut system - valuable and unique. I prefer a tent but when it's hosing down, a hut is usually not too far away. 5. $140 pn is certainly pushing the bounds of reasonable, imo. I expect it will have the desired effect in reducing numbers. However, tourism can turn suddenly when the next big thing is discovered. Pushing the cost too high makes people look elsewhere and, when it flips, dropping the cost won't bring them back. BTW, any guarantee DoC will actually keep the expected additional revenue? Won't Gov just reduce funding elsewhere? 6. I'm more concerned about existing undeveloped tracks/areas being taken over and converted into glamping extravaganza and marketed for (short term) profit. You've had some developments suggested (and thankfully rejected so far) - turning the 5 Passes into another Routeburn?