Thema Neuseeland

Tourists Find NZ Fully Booked Overseas tour operators who sell holidays in New Zealand say the industry is losing a lot of business during peak periods due to an accommodation shortage. The managing director of Value Tours in Australia, Len Murray, says he has had plenty of customers who went elsewhere because they couldn't book a bed during the summer months. And a US-based company, The Best of New Zealand Fly Fishing, says it couldn't find South Island rental cars for clients for 10 days in February. Murray says the industry needs to find a solution. He says areas including the South Island's West Coast, Kaikoura, Te Anau and Queenstown need to address the accommodation shortage. The comments follow a complaint from a travel publisher who claims Europeans are finding it difficult to get enough information about New Zealand following Tourism New Zealand's decision to exit Frankfurt last year and market out of London. Sigurd Roeber says he has just started selling the newspaper Neuseeland News in German speaking countries. Roeber says the German language newspaper will help provide answers for Europe's 150 million German speaking people, who otherwise have to call London and deal with an English-based service. But Tourism NZ says closing the German office saved US$250,000 a year and this money has been going into better marketing, sales support and consumer information in both English and German languages. It says visitor numbers from Germany have grown by 9% in the past year. Source: One News