DoC to charge visitors more on Great Walks

"Conservation Minister Maggie Barry told a meeting at the National Party annual conference on Saturday that part of the $76 million in Budget funding for the Department of Conservation would be spent on a new computer system to enable "differential pricing", allowing DOC to charge international tourists more than New Zealanders when they booked walks on tracks such as the Milford, Routeburn and Kepler. Referring to recent calls for a levy on arriving international visitors, Barry said: "We won't be putting a border tax on, that's not how we roll. "But what we are doing with that new computer system, which is part of that $76m, we are investing into a modern, fit-for-purpose DOC computer system to take bookings. "We will be doing differential charging so visitors who actually use our estates (as opposed to visitors who just come to New Zealand who don't actually go out into the DOC estate) but visitors who actually go on our walks will be paying more – substantially more - to access the huts than New Zealanders." https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2017/06/25/35804/foreign-trampers-to-pay-higher-prices Has anyone thought this through? What is the ROI on spending $76m to charge overseas visitors more on just the Great Walks? Because while Barry has referenced a couple of well-known tracks, she's left the door wide open to a booking system that charges for ALL hut access. And that doesn't feel right either. What it does feel like is another step along the path of commercialising DoC as a state owned tourism operation. It will do nothing to address the much wider and chronic underfunding of DoC in terms of it's conservation role, and in the huts themselves it creates a 'two class' system of visitors and locals. I still much prefer a border tax; small and efficient. The vast majority of visitors to this country are here because of the Conservation estate to some degree.