Preparing for international travel: ‘People don’t want a third winter in New Zealand’ – Stuff.co.nz

Kiwis are renewing their passports, Air New Zealand is re-hiring, and experts predict a bumper travel year in 2022. Will our return to flight be turbulence-free? Kelly Dennett reports.

Alice Heaslip is saving for her next overseas holiday.

The Auckland mum has spent years globetrotting, travelling overseas twice a year. Little did she know that her November 2019 trip to Tokyo would be her last for more than two years. Just a few months later Covid-19 grounded the world.

We did spend two weeks driving around the South Island in July 2020, which was amazing, but nothing compares to international travel, she says. I have missed it so much. Its all I dream about. Theres so much of the world that Im dying to see.

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Alice Heaslip and her son Ashley in Los Angeles in 2016.

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Following the Governments tentative plans to unlock New Zealands gate in the first quarter of next year, shes saving to head to Singapore in mid-2022, where she plans to tack on sojourns to Hong Kong and Shanghai, after a work conference, rounding out the year with a white Christmas in Europe.

Shes not the only one with a post-lockdown bucket list. As summer beckons, House of Travel chief operating officer and Travel Agents Association of New Zealand president Brent Thomas says Kiwis are preparing to take flight.

[Figures] indicate were going to be highly vaccinated by later this year, even as early as October on current trajectories. Its not that far away; from people thinking about booking travel and making those commitments, says Thomas. Put it this way: people dont want a third winter in New Zealand. Theyve missed their travelling in 2020 and 2021, and were hearing very clearly they dont want to miss out on 2022.

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Brent Thomas, chief operating officer at House of Travel and president of the Travel Agents Association of New Zealand (TAANZ).

Millions of Kiwis had international travel plans scuppered by Covid-19. In 2019, 3.1 million packed bags and hopped on planes, but by the end of 2020, only 1.74m had travelled internationally. This year Customs figures show by the end of July just 344,208 made it across the border. The short-lived trans-Tasman and Cook Islands bubbles showed how keen travellers were to get out more than 98,000 departed in May, compared to 13,373 in February.

Just a week before the highly virulent Delta variant was found in Auckland, fog on the runway was cleared, with Government plans for how Kiwis could once again safely leave and re-enter the country revealed. Travellers wings will be tied to a low, medium or high-risk pathway. Low-risk travel would allow quarantine-free travel for vaccinated travellers coming from low-risk countries. Medium-risk travel would require a combination of self-isolation or reduced MIQ possibly up to a week and high-risk travel would require travellers to complete two weeks in MIQ. Details are yet to be released about what would be considered risky travel, but its anticipated to include how highly other populations are vaccinated.

The Ministry of Health is running home isolation tests for a few hundred people from October, and working on getting vaccine certificates and rapid border testing up and running.

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Kiwis are renewing their passports.

Department of Internal Affairs, Te Tari Taiwhenua, general manager of services and access Julia Wootton, says after Aprils travel bubble announcement it processed 80,000 passport applications, including renewals, an increase of 65,000 from the same period last year.

Since late July it had noticed a steady decline in applications, but online applications over the past two weeks had reached historic high levels. It had just opened online applications for first-time childrens passports. Wootton believes there are about 420,000 expired passports in the country, and encouraged people to renew them if they were going to expire.

For now, Kiwis can only watch as the rest of the world embraces reopening. UK travellers can travel the continent in the same way Kiwis will be expected to fly risk-based travel caveated by vaccinations, and testing.

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Irina Read in Bali. The Auckland woman is looking forward to travelling to Moscow to see her friends and family, in 2022.

Some countries, like Croatia, Germany, and Norway, are open to non or partially vaccinated travellers without quarantine, but fully vaccinated travellers can visit the likes of the Bahamas, Finland, Dubai, France, Greece, Ireland and Poland, without quarantine.

Internationally, cruises have become the travel of choice for travellers with the ability to find a spot scarce, particularly as Americans book in large numbers in the Caribbean and Hawaii. Brent Thomas notes that internationally, where there was more certainty, people do really start to book in, and quickly.

Closer to home, low-risk travel is expected to include the Pacific. Says Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran: New Zealanders want to travel we were seeing this across our domestic network and on services to Rarotonga. The Cook Islands bubble saw a 230 per cent increase in its bookings compared to pre-Covid levels.

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The Pacific, particularly the Cook Islands, will likely be Kiwis first stop.

But domestic and Pacific travel arent enough to sustain the airline. You can imagine were incredibly keen to see international borders open as soon as its safe to do so. We dont need them all open at once, but getting up and running to places like North America, Japan, China, Australia and the Pacific is critical to our business strategy.

Work is well under way in preparation for takeoff next year, including its first flight to New York. Its also added a passenger service to Hobart, and three cargo routes to Guangzhou, and Los Angeles. With the government-assisted cargo scheme its been able to keep the lights on, which means it will be a relatively easy process to open these flights up.

It was consulting with 4000 of its essential workers on health measures, and is considering expanding its requirement for mandatory vaccination to include all employees who interact with customers or their baggage, and essential workers required to come to work.

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Opening up the borders relies on a highly vaccinated NZ population.

So far more than 82 per cent of its 2300 required staff were double-jabbed, and about 700 had been rehired to keep up with demand.

With more countries opening up for travel with varying caveats, it feels like this is how the future travel experience will look, at least for a while, Foran says.

Theres some innovation required to take some friction out. For travellers to keep track of all the different requirements for each country, it will require a digital solution like the IATA Travel Pass. Having one universal app across the world would make more sense then a number of different apps being used, but I suspect for the interim we will see individual countries apply their own system.

Ideally we need simplicity here it will not only give governments the confidence to open borders but give customers the peace of mind that everyone onboard meets the same government health requirements as they do.

Thomas estimates 2022 traveller numbers could return to 40 to 50 per cent, maybe even two thirds of pre-pandemic levels thats up to two million who could be dusting off suitcases next year. But key to how quickly people book is solving MIQs issues.

Irina Read says shed most like to see her friends and family in Moscow, but having to pay an extra $3000+ for isolation on return would dampen her enthusiasm. Her readiness to book would depend on how long the wait for normality would be. If its two more years Id [save] enough for [MIQ], because Ill go crazy. I miss Europe so much. I got used to going. Now, Im stuck.

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Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran says its critical international travel resumes.

Alice Heaslip says while shes quick to plan, there is a handbrake. I wont be booking anything until much closer to the time, whereas pre-Covid I would book well in advance to secure good deals. A positive to all this is that a lot of travel companies are offering more flexibility.

Wellington travel broker Katrina Harding said people will be wanting to book only when they know its safe. The latest outbreak will have spooked everyone, and they wont be in a hurry, even when we open up. I dont think theyre necessarily going to race again, knowing anything can change and borders can close at any time.

She thought New Zealand could capitalise off the growth of cruising, while injecting some love back into regions that may see a downturn in domestic tourism as travellers race to the other side of the world.

The Insurance Council of New Zealand warns while some insurance policies may include specific Covid-19 cover, border closures imposed by a Government are not covered by any insurer. It advised travellers to get insurance while booking.

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Preparing for international travel: 'People don't want a third winter in New Zealand' - Stuff.co.nz