great walks fees for foreigners up to double price

they make money hand over fist from the overnight guided walkers on the routeburn and kepler. enough money to helicopter gravel up onto the top of the Routeburn covering miles of track....

Is it really fair to compare these prices to a motel or lodge on a track overseas? You mightn't be paying for a shower or a private room on a Great Walk, but you're paying for some reasonable facilities regardless to be maintained in a remote and sometimes hostile location, to high building standards, and for a very limited number of people who are allowed to access them, often only during certain months of the year. Plenty can still be argued about whether DOC should even be providing the level of service that it does, and how much this should be subsidised. Doubtless some of the costs of the experience, like pest control which gives people an even better experience, aren't even included in the calculated costs, but even on the face of it these experiences run at a loss. Doesn't the fact that it's running at a loss demonstrate that whatever people might think about how crappy the facilities are, and however cramped they are and however annoyed they are at the smelly snoring person next to them, they're still being undercharged for everything they're getting?

you're paying fo the track to be manicured into footpath and all the mud, treeroots and fallen trees to be removed on a very regular basis

Yes. I hear that's what people expect these days.

That gravel is killing my feet :( They poured it all over on the Hillary trail recently. What used to be nice tracks has become a boring footpath :(

I am with madpom on this. Can't see it being enforced too well and too much opportunity to avoid paying. Don't know why they cannot bring in a border tax to pay for it. Applicable to all overseas visitors. Pass it straight to doc to improve both overseas visitors and local experiences. How to keep IRD's hand off it is the real problem.

Citizens versus residents is another very significant detail. Plenty of people legally reside in NZ and pay full taxes, even vote here, without being citizens. Regardless, technically if residency or nationality can be verified when booking somehow, technology could get the requirement down to one of merely having to carry a form of verifiable ID, to confirm who you are. The hut tickets would have their content digitally signed. To ensure they've not been forged, rangers (or anyone with an app) could scan a barcode or similar to verify the details stated on the ticket have been authorised by DOC. It'd still be a significant leap from the status quo to require people to carry any form of ID, though. If it starts with Great Walks, how long is it before people start needing to take verifiable identification to any bookable facility?

One of several uncertainties I see with a border tax is that everyone wants it. After the $10 billion tourism industry has finished lobbying for its share, how much is actually left for DOC? How much use can DOC make of it anyway? What's the overall strategy for conservation and recreation and what's expected for the money being spent? All this latest stuff is token gestures. A long time ago New Zealand needed a serious strategy between tourism, recreation, local councils and funding. Instead, the policy has been to spend $100m+ each year for Tourism NZ to tell people to come here, then just expect everything to magically cope with it through market forces. Now that everything's evidently bursting at the seams, the government's just barely starting to even acknowledge that there's a problem, and shifting a few deckchairs.

Posts on New Zealand tramping websites after the National Party announcement mostly backed the higher charges, http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/business/96147475/Tourist-groups-back-higher-walk-fees-for-international-vistors

Editorial: It is fair to charge foreigners more for our Great Walks https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/96150951/editorial-it-is-fair-to-charge-foreigners-more-for-our-great-walks