{"id":601291,"date":"2026-09-15T18:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T18:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/601291\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T18:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T18:40:10","slug":"visitor-levy-sharing-is-a-good-start-but-more-needed-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/601291\/","title":{"rendered":"Visitor levy sharing is a good start but more needed \u2013 Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

The country as a whole benefits greatly from that, but it doesn\u2019t come without a bill.<\/p>\n

And that bill often falls on ratepayers already saddled with increasingly unaffordable infrastructure requirements.<\/p>\n

Take Ruapehu, for example: a geographically large district with massive infrastructure costs but only 8000 ratepayers to pay for it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a problem even before accounting for the thousands of tourists who flock to the region year-round.<\/p>\n

Essentially, places like Ruapehu and Queenstown must support far more people than their resident population.<\/p>\n

Under National\u2019s plan<\/a>, councils will get a share of the levy collected from visitors at the border, based on the number of overseas tourists who stay in their area.<\/p>\n

The news has been welcomed by mayors, and why wouldn\u2019t it be?<\/p>\n

Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell said it was \u201csuch a relief\u201d<\/a> because regions needed investment and to be able to make decisions about how it is spent.<\/p>\n

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, a staunch advocate of a bed-tax the Government initially considered, said it was a step in the right direction but would still leave his council millions of dollars short compared with the take from a bed tax.<\/p>\n

Ruapehu Mayor Weston Kirton said it \u201cdoesn\u2019t cover anywhere near the costs\u201d<\/a> associated with being a year-round tourist destination.<\/p>\n

Their responses vary as much as the needs of their districts.<\/p>\n

Giving councils a say in how they spend money collected by visitors is a good thing, but there may one day need to be flexibility around regions collecting money as well.<\/p>\n

The share of the International Visitor Levy will be gratefully accepted by councils.<\/p>\n

But it won\u2019t solve the issue entirely, and if visitor numbers continue to grow, so will the burden placed on our infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The conversation about how we pay for the costs of one of our biggest industries needs to continue, and no doubt it will.<\/p>\n

Councils will make sure it does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The country as a whole benefits greatly from that, but it doesn\u2019t come without a bill. And that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3013,7558,13997,36091,6101,1019,185,96885,130,2683,3556,23362,111,43,139,69,7234,2170,16482,13660,4497,3590,1845],"class_list":["post-601291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-but","tag-councils","tag-editorial","tag-funds","tag-good","tag-international","tag-is","tag-levy","tag-more","tag-move","tag-national","tag-needed","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-partys","tag-plan","tag-redistribute","tag-sharing","tag-start","tag-visitor","tag-welcome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}