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There are a number of things that stand out to me post-Covid that are disappointing.\xa0

Obviously the recessionary state this place has been in and the carnage it has caused, and continues to cause, although they are all ultimately tied to the one major event.\xa0

But tourism stands out as the most clear example of something we had and something we have now lost.\xa0

Not literally. They still arrive, but not like they used to and not even close. Something happened between closing the borders and opening them back up.\xa0

Initially it was a time thing and, apparently, it was a capacity thing because the planes weren't back yet.\xa0

But four years on, what some of us saw a couple of years ago everyone now sees, and the truth has been laid bare.\xa0

We are simply not up to it the way we once were. Bits are, like Queenstown and the general area, back plus some, and that\u2019s awesome. But nowhere else is.\xa0

We are marooned at about 80% and that doesn\u2019t count the gap between the 80% and the 100%+ it could have been, should have been, and all those tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people who should have been arriving in these past few years. They went elsewhere.\xa0

Let's be blunt - it's not like the world hasn\u2019t been travelling, they're just not travelling here.\xa0

Enter the new entry fee to the country. It triples and it'll be $100. Industry operators don\u2019t like it, and I don't blame them.\xa0

Doing it tough is hard enough without heaping more cost on, but I assume the Government took that into account.\xa0

They defend it by comparing us to the fees of other countries. But isn't that the point? We aren't other countries and the numbers show it.\xa0

I still want to argue $100 should not be a barrier. If you spent three grand getting here, is $100 what tips you over?\xa0

But here is the inescapable truth - tourism, along with dairy, was the golden goose. And if we didn't wreck it, we irreparably harmed it.\xa0

I don\u2019t see how making it more expensive improves our plight.\xa0

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