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Being a tourist destination and having tight travel restrictions are not mutually exclusive by any stretch. Relative to any other western country I New Zealand
by blululu 6y ago
Being a tourist destination and having tight travel restrictions are not mutually exclusive by any stretch. Relative to any other western country I New Zealand has very strict customs (Only the US could compete and our our border screening is pretty pathetic when you start to look at it). Most of New Zealand's restrictions center around bio-controls/plant inspection, but consequently the country maintains a pretty comprehensive screening process. Also being surrounded by 1000 miles of Ocean means that it is pretty easy to monitor the three international airports in the country. (Relative to say the Netherlands which has trains arriving in from 5 different countries in the same custom's union every day).
- EdwardDiego 6y ago> Three international airports 5 :) 3 of them are limited in destinations, only Christchurch and Auckland go direct to places other than Australia or the Pacific islands (Wellington Airport's runway isn't long enough for the bigger planes), but a lot of people coming here will fly via Aussie anyway. But I agree, we're definitely better placed in that regard, except we initially relied on self-isolation and well, that didn't work very well for us. If we'd actually implemented stringent testing at the airports, or mandatory and enforced quarantine (not that we had the facilities to do so), then we possibly could have avoided the lockdowns altogether. We closed the borders to all but citizens and permanent residents when we realised a fair proportion of tourists were ignoring the self-isolation requirements. One helicopter pilot at Franz Josef Glacier flew his passengers to the Police when they told him they'd just arrived in the country.