great walks fees for foreigners up to double price

doc can make it known they will throw people out of huts and campsites to put people off, great walks there are a lot of people around most are good to deal with and i doubt there will be major issues with people hassling rangers in those instances.. at present people do book and pay for great walks, you need to book in advance usually or you get a penalty and thats published and most people do book in advance

@izogi: that already exists, if you leave with pending fines you might not be able to come back next time if you didn't pay… As for stopping people leaving, it would cost more than the fines to delay a flight just for that, or worse to have the person detained and deported. This wouldn't make any sense. As for rangers acting as cops, this doesn't make any sense either, we don't have enough money to have them maintain tracks, huts and do their conservation job, but you want them to have more work? This would bring very little financial gain compared to the time used up for that. Plus, this would lead to people actively trying to avoid rangers, visitor centres and advice, leading to more people going off track or on a rough tracks/routes without seeking knowledge by fear of getting fined (either for right or wrong reasons). A terrible idea imho.

My 10 cents worth: Increasing the GW price is long overdue and a great idea. More money to govt/doc/ Mr taxpayer or whoever. I'm with kreig on this,its about time and id be surprised if many tourists went: Oh that's too expensive I'll do the rees/dart or 5 passes instead. Panic not,they'll pay up none the wiser. If i was in Paris and they increased the Eiffel tower price,I'd be oh well it is what it is. It should be user pays,so talk about border taxes is a waste of time.make the GW tramper pay,not some poor schumck visiting his mum in Auckland.

Thanks. Yes I looked it up. https://www.govt.nz/browse/recreation-and-the-environment/freedom-camping/ I'm interested why it doesn't seem to be being used for so many fines, though. eg. From http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/92307430/60-per-cent-of-freedom-camping-fines-remain-unpaid-in-christchurch : :: "The council had not prevented tourists leaving the country without paying the fine and it was working with other agencies to explore what, if any, options were available to it, Weston said." I hadn't thought any need to delay flights, or to detain and deport people. The fines aren't exactly huge in the scheme of things? Is it not possible to simply prevent people from boarding a flight until they've paid? If they miss the flight by refusing to pay a fine then it's their own stupid fault and their own responsibility to book another flight. If it seriously gets to the extent of needing to deport a person, there's a big incentive for a traveller to pay up to avoid that, because having been deported risks complicating a person's ability to get into many other countries in future. "As for rangers acting as cops, this doesn't make any sense either" On this I agree. I don't fancy seeing DOC workers tasked with being police. Where enforcement's often already impractical, it seems very inefficient to go to all the lengths needed to enforce stuff except where it's seriously warranted. To me it makes more sense to try and arrange the system to fit what people do anyway, wherever possible. For example, I get why booking systems and payment systems make sense in high use areas where there's some hope of having staff nearby to check on people. For most of the network where it cannot be effectively enforced anyway, I still wonder if NZ would be better off making hut fees a voluntary system instead of an honesty system... or at least try to make it really really easy for people to voluntarily pay for what they use. There are definitely some people abusing the generous nature of the system who can't really be ignored, though.

@izogi: imagine a tourist getting at the airport, passing through security about an hour before the flights departs, just to be told you can't leave unless you pay that $300 fine (or whatever). Yes some people would pay, but some would be "I'm not paying", or more likely "I just spent all of my money at the airport shops, and don't have anything left". Now the guy already checked in his luggage, it's possibly already loaded in the plane, at this time the plane is supposed to wait for the passenger as he already checked in, and he is in the airport. Now if he's not in the plane, it needs to be delayed so that this passenger luggage can be unloaded. This simple delay of a few minutes already cost thousands of dollars to the airport and the airline. Ah and I'm not even counting the fact that while the guy is held up at immigration point, the immigration officer is also stuck there, making the line of people waiting longer. Probably needing to open another counter, costing some overtime. Probably needs to have a security guard because the guy is getting nervous, which is quite likely as this is a stressful situation… Now the guy is stuck in the airport, doesn't have money/doesn't want to pay for another flight. The airport is closing down, but the guy can't enter NZ again as his visa has just expired. You need to get someone from the embassy, someone from immigration, maybe issue a new short term visa, spend hours to sort it out. Worse case he can't/won't pay for a new plane ticket as he knows NZ will have to eventually. NZ govt will now have to pay for a plane ticket, after involving embassy, courts etc., costing thousands of hours of work, and dozens of thousands of dollars, for what, cashing on a $300 debt? Not worth it. It's just like when you fail to pay a $200 gas bill. They will bother you with letters for a while and give up after a few months, it's not worth it to pay a lawyer to get you to court over a small sum. If you are looking for more money, maybe you should write to MPs about reducing the budget of tourism NZ no? Tourism NZ budget was raised by $30M 2 years ago, and is now about $120M/year. So like what the govt is doing here is spending money to get more people to visit NZ, and then complaining that there's too many people visiting NZ, and they need more money for that… Money that is currently spent on getting more people here… That just sounds like a BS excuse to raise fees. And the price for kiwis will probably go up the same way too…

No, I'm not looking for more money from tourists. Fines are meant to be a disincentive for many of the problems NZ faces, like using facilities without paying or camping in illegal and environmentally destructive places. That disincentive reduces greatly when it's common knowledge that you can just ignore it and vanish into international obscurity once your holiday's over, when really the effect should be for people to realise that if they don't want to be made to pay fines then they should stop doing stupid things. I'm open to your reasoning but I'd also like to see some expert feedback before assuming that's how it'd actually play out. How many people travel internationally without a credit card? How many genuinely cannot afford to pay it, if and when they're told they'll miss their flight, and possibly suffer worse consequences, without doing so? What options exist to warn airlines that people have unpaid fines when they try to check in? How many travellers are right at the end of their visa term when they finally leave? What options are available to remind people to pay their fines before leaving, and make it really easy for them to do so before they reach the airport or when they check in?

its a supply vs demand issue with the great walks, the demand exceeds the supply and as happens in teh commercial world the price gets spiked, given there are finite spaces available its either do that or it remains first come first serve. in the states they dont have online booking systems, last i was aware,. if you wanted to get a permit to walk a track with limited permits available, the only way was to fax the office with a permit request and they only accept faxes during opening hours, they throw away ones received out of hours. and the demand is high, you have to fax in when the office opens . they open up the permits several months in advance, but not for the whole season. you need to work out when the permit will be available for the day you want and fax in on the first day of availability in the morning to secure a place or miss out... someone i know faxed every day for seven weeks before he managed to ge a permit, the office fax line is usually engaged and its pot luck if you get through.... BUT you dont have to pay extra, which method would you prefer? it takes a lot more labour to process faxes than in an online system....

@izogi: credit cards are very rare in Europe, in France I don't know of anyone who has one. Usually our cards are debit cards, they won't pay if you don't have enough funds on your account. And even if people could afford it but didn't want to, NZ doesn't have any way to pressure them to pay, those funds are in another country, another jurisdiction, they can't be seized. As for reminding people, think that fines are sent as letters, and most tourists don't have an address in NZ, and the letter might arrive after you have already left the country. That's actually an issue when you genuinely want to pay a fine. And yeah I agree for the disincentive part, but I don't see any way against that. But again, most tourist don't get fined, and most who do will pay it, so it's not a huge issue I think, and even if it was resolved, this is not what will bring millions of dollars for DOC budget.

@bohwaz so how to they go with renting vehicles in NZ? Last few time I rented one I needed a credit card. If I didn't have one I had to pay some huge deposit against the insurance excess and potential fines I might run up agaibst the vehicle. Recall it being $2k or similar. I only have a visa debit which was not acceptable as a guarantee: ended up having to ring the missus to get her to give them her credit card details. All the airport dramas you describe already happen over unpaid student loans. But since thats mainly kiwi's travel being devastated I guess it doesn't affect our international reputation. Whereas I guess news of tourists being detained on departure would make for better international headlines.

people must be stopped at airports all the time for other issues... so i would expect their are procedures in place to account for this by all parties concerned to minimise disruption... theres a limit to how much a plane will be held up when a passenger is detained, they can always just hold the luggage at the far end and send it back if the person is going to end up remaining at the country of inteneded departure.... just the fact that doc may kick people out of huts will be a big enough incentive for people not to try and rort the great walks booking system. i've been on great walks a fair bit and cant recall anyone who didnt have a booking in advance, they dont get rorted as much as the huts that have less ranger presence...