Queenstown Lakes mayor slams government distribution of visitor levy

Mayor Glyn Lewers has criticised the government for what he says is a lack of transparency about how a fee collected from international visitors is spent.

This week the government announced it will be tripling the 'door charge' visitors pay to enter New Zealand, taking the amount from $35 to $100.

But despite his district being a tourist mecca, the Queenstown Lakes mayor is not celebrating the news.

He told RNZ journalist Lisa Owen on the state broadcaster's Checkpoint show on Wednesday night his ratepayers had benefited little from the fee to date.

And, despite the price hike, he said he had "very little confidence" his district would see anymore under the current distribution structure.

The levy was introduced by the Labour government in 2019, and the mayor estimated the amount of revenue diverted from it to the Queenstown Lakes since then was "probably in the hundreds of thousands".

His view is, that does not reflect the heavy lifting done by the district in regards to hosting international visitors.

He told Checkpoint one of every three international visitors to New Zealand visits Queenstown Lakes, the district accounts for one-fifth of international visitor bed nights, and it is the second largest destination for international visitors after Auckland.

"We are driving tourism GDP, mostly for the South Island, and we're a huge contributor to the GST take when it comes to tourism for the Crown coffers, but the ratepayer in particular here sees very little in return.

"For every resident that sleeps in Queenstown Lakes, there's 47 on average international visitors here, so that puts immense pressure on...our potable water systems, our wastewater systems, our roading."

RNZ reported the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's latest tally of revenue collected via the levy was $175 million, of which less than half has been spent to date, although the ministry indicated more has been allocated to future projects.

The mayor's view is the spend up so far has failed to address some key problems of tourism in this neck of the woods.

"Everyone's been using it for their own little projects rather than addressing the real problems...It's the usual toilets and car parks."

Queenstown Lakes, he told Checkpoint, has "far greater issues".

"This goes to the question of social licence of the visitor economy."

He said he wants to see revenue from the levy directed to local government authorities that have set up destination management plans that address local issues, and it should be divvied up "proportional to international visitor load".

Listen to the full RNZ interview here