Jared Simcox News Today

A sense of optimism is pervading parts of South Canterbury now Aucklanders are allowed to travel, but other business people are disappointed the South Island will remain in the orange light setting until January.

Vaccine passes are now required at all Ngāi Tahu Tourism operations.

Judges said the business is "a fantastic project which truly delivers the Māori message and embraces everything the tourism industry is about”.

We might have one more year to wait until Matariki becomes an official public holiday, but there's plenty you can do to celebrate this year.

Rayward said pre-Covid the domestic market accounted for only five per cent of Air Safaris’ business. They managed to increase that to 15 per cent after lockdown, he said. “So we were down over 80 per cent of our business, and this hopefully might get us back to 20 or 30 per cent of our pre-Covid business levels.” Rayward said the mood amongst tourism operators in Mackenzie was cautious optimism, with an expectation that visitor numbers will start small and slowly increase. Alden Willi...

This month with Chinese New Year, the Year of the Ox, falling on Friday, February 12, the figures are expected to be worse. Ngāi Tahu Tourism Dark Sky Project business manager Jared Simcox said typically over Chinese New Year they could expect a significant number of Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking customers. “This year we will most likely see a fraction of these customers,” Simcox said. Their early-mid December 2020 visitor numbers were close to what they expected overall from the dom...