Queenstown's big weekend party to celebrate winter, snow and visitors
The people of Queenstown will celebrate the winter they hope will turn the tourist destination’s fortunes around after a lamentable two years of Covid-19.
The Welcome to Winter 2022 celebration will take place over four days starting on Thursday and include fireworks, live music, night skiing and swimming in Lake Wakatipu for the enthusiastic.
Headline act Mitch James would play on the central Queenstown outdoor stage on Friday, followed by Stellar on Saturday.
Destination Queenstown chief executive Mat Woods said the celebration would be happening on one of the busiest weekends of winter when the Australian and New Zealand school holidays overlap.
Kiwi musician Mitch James will be performing in central Queenstown on Friday night.
Kiwi musician Mitch James will be performing in central Queenstown on Friday night.
While everyone would benefit, the celebrations would be focused on the local community, he said.
Since Covid-19 arrived in New Zealand in 2020 and borders closed, Queenstown’s tourism and hospitality businesses have been hit by a massive drop in customers.
Just in the year to January 2021 there was a 33% drop in visitor spending in the town, down to $610 million.
Even with borders open now, many businesses were running at less capacity due to critical staff shortages and staff being hit by winter illnesses and absences due to Covid-19.
However, the winter season had started with incredible snow, which attracted strong numbers of Australian visitors, Woods said.
Many direct trans-Tasman flights have been booked out and hotels were booked about 80%, the highest levels since 2019, Woods said.
“This is the boost we need. It’s great, but it’s going to be a long recovery.”
Future Hospitality Group co-owner Bert Haines said there were ten-fold more visitors in Queenstown in recent weeks compared to the last two years.
“We’re busy... we’re actually overwhelmed by the amount of people here combined with the lack of staff available to work.”
Like other businesses he was battling staff shortages and sickness across the company’s five central-Queenstown restaurants and bars.
Queenstown's latest boutique hotel is facing an unusual quandary as it prepares to welcome Australian tourists - it can't find any trained butlers.
“It’s been a very delicate line to navigate, trying to look after our team and look after our guests,” he said.
The company would not be able to continue operating all of its venues seven days a week, he said.
Woods said it would take some more time for the number of visitors to Queenstown to build up to 2019 levels and many hotels were restricting bookings due to the staff shortages.
Also, there were more beds in town than pre-Covid, including the 227-room Holiday Inn Express and Suites in central Queenstown and three new hotels with a total of about 340 rooms in the suburb of Frankton.
The Welcome to Winter celebration would also mark the return of large events to the district.
Paid for from the government’s $50 million Regional Events Fund, it marked the end of a horror run with events expected to generate $100 million cancelled in the first four months of the year.
“I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait,” Woods said.
⚠️ DOGS DIE IN HOT CARS. If you love them, don't leave them. ⚠️
It's a message we share time and time again, and this year, we're calling on you to help us spread that message further.
Did you know that calls to SPCA about dogs left inside hot cars made up a whopping 11% of all welfare calls last summer? This is a completely preventable issue, and one which is causing hundreds of dogs (often loved pets) to suffer.
Here are some quick facts to share with the dog owners in your life:
👉 The temperature inside a car can heat to over 50°C in less than 15 minutes.
👉 Parking in the shade and cracking windows does little to help on a warm day. Dogs rely on panting to keep cool, which they can't do in a hot car.
👉 This puts dogs at a high risk of heatstroke - a serious condition for dogs, with a mortality rate between 39%-50%.
👉 It is an offence under the Animal Welfare Act to leave a dog in a hot vehicle if they are showing signs of heat stress. You can be fined, and prosecuted.
SPCA has created downloadable resources to help you spread the message even further. Posters, a flyer, and a social media tile can be downloaded from our website here: www.spca.nz...
We encourage you to use these - and ask your local businesses to display the posters if they can. Flyers can be kept in your car and handed out as needed.
This is a community problem, and one we cannot solve alone. Help us to prevent more tragedies this summer by sharing this post.
On behalf of the animals - thank you ❤️
Poll: Would you rather: Christmas in summer forever or winter forever?
Just a bit of a fun poll to get you thinking.
If you had to live out your Christmas days, would you prefer it was a summer Christmas or a winter Christmas?
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61.9% Summer
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36.6% Winter
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1.5% Other - I'll share below
Worst Xmas ever?
There's a a lot of planning that goes into Christmas day and sometimes things just don't go to plan. But it can be a good thing - a family mishap or hilarious memory that you can laugh about in Christmases to come.
Whether you burnt the dinner or were stranded at an airport...
Share your Christmas mishaps below!
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