Lynda Keene: Tourism Export Council Chief Executive on changes to the visitor visa allowing people to work remotely while on holiday

Tourists in Aotearoa on the visitor visa will soon be able to work remotely while here.

The change is targeting 'digital nomads', people employed by overseas companies here to holiday and work at the same time, in the hope they will spend more time and money in the country.

Tourism is currently New Zealand's second largest export and the latest visitor numbers from Stats NZ show in November 2024 we reached 86% of pre-Covid levels.

Chief Executive of the Tourism Export Council Lynda Keene welcomes the move, saying it will help get us closer to pre-Covid numbers, but more should have been done sooner.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well tourists and New Zealand's on the visit of visa
will soon be able to work remotely while here. The
change is targeting digital nomads, people employed by overseas companies
here on holiday and working at the same time in
the hope they'll spend more time and money in the country.
Tourism is currently in New Zealand's second largest export and
the latest visit in numbers from Statistics in New Zealand

(00:21):
show we're reaching eighty six percent of the pre COVID levels.
Linda Keen is the Tourism Export Council Chief Executive and
joins me now a very good morning to you, Linda.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Good morning Raman.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
How much of a difference will this policy make, because
let's be honest, they've been working anyway.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Look, the third thing, Raman, is that this is very
encouraging that the government has now identified tourism as a
major economic driver and to help their growth agenda. What
difference will it make now? Not a lot in the
second half of the visitor season, which is is January
to March period, and the reason for that is that

(01:01):
New Zealan is a long hal destination. You have to
either have one or two long haul flights to reach US.
So if the target for America or Southeast Asian digital
nomads is for them to come to New Zealand, they
may not quickly switch to that right now. This type
of initiative would have been fantastic to have announced this

(01:24):
time last year.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
All right, So you did say it won't make much
of a difference. When will it make a difference?

Speaker 2 (01:30):
I think with the upcoming season. So the season starts
on the first of October, and because our digital nomad
and all visitors as a long haul destination, they take
their time to make a commitment to visit New Zealand.
We're a committed to destination. It's a little bit different
with Australia when we might decide tomorrow that we're going

(01:51):
to go to Australia for a short break, which is
a short haul destination. So it's going to take I
would say at least six months for us to see
any positive result with the digital nomad initiative.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
All right, Okay, well, good things take time. I guess
could more quick changes have been made to improve visitor numbers.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yes, we know the government's been working hard with trying
to get the economy back on track. Some of the
decisions that have made in the past twelve months, particularly
with increasing immigration, visa fees and the international Visitor and
Conservation levy, these are decisions that we knew, so these

(02:30):
were increases we knew we're probably going to come through,
but we suggested to government that the best time to
do that would have been from the first of October
twenty twenty five. And that's because the industry is still
in recovery. Our first season that we reached fifty five
percent of pre pandemic numbers. At the end of this season,

(02:50):
we only recovered at eighty three percent, and now on
an annual basis after another six months, we're only at
eighty four percent. So the timing of these initiatives absolutely critical.
But I'm saying that we're just really pleased that the
government have put tourism back as on their growth the gender,
and we're keen to partner and work with them to

(03:11):
get our visitors back as quipment as we can.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
You did refer there to previous government decisions on migration
and increasing the levy fees and all that sort of
stuff hasn't had didn't have much of an effect on tourism.
And the economy. If you're faced with a fee to
go and enter our parks or whatever it might be,
is that going to put people off? Have you noticed that.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
At this time? Yes, we have the inbound tour operators
that we work with. They have offshore tool wholesalers and
travel agents as their clients, and the word from the
offshore industry is that the timing of us increasing these
fees has certainly had an impact on visitors considering New

(03:53):
Zealand as a destination. We're in a global market to
try and get tourism back to recovery, and we're lagging somewhat.
So any type of initiative needs to have a little
bit of a runway, It needs a bit of a
lead time. And in hindsight, you know, the industry, we
do believe that these increase in fees have had an impact.

(04:13):
We knew they were going to come, but would have
hoped that they would have come later this year, not
last year.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
All right, Linda, So in a nutshell, it's a good move.
It'll take time to bed in, but we'll reap the
benefits soon.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yes, exactly one.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Oh good on your Linda, Linda Keen there, who's the
Tourism Council Chief Executive. Good stuff, good stuff with that
in Netflix and more milk and cheese being exported will
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