Published on : Wednesday, August 29, 2018
The “looming hotel crisis” follows after the biggest year for tourism to date in NZ in 2016, which witnessed 3.5 million visitors, said the company’s national director of hotels Dean Humphries.
With that figure forecast to rise to 4.5m by 2022, “we simply don’t have enough hotel rooms in our current inventory to cope with this level of growth in the tourism sector”, Humphries said.
“If immediate solutions are not found, it is unlikely we will continue to grow at current levels.
“In fact, in Auckland where rooms are in critically short supply, hotel inventory has been shrinking with a number of hotels closed for refurbishment and up to 500 serviced apartment units having been taken out of the short-stay accommodation pool and put towards alternative uses by private investors and first home buyers.”
At present, the inventory had shrunk from 9500 rooms to about 9200 over the past two years.
Humphries stated that about 1300 rooms were under construction and should be in use by 2020.
“There are a number of issues holding developers back, including high construction costs, the increasing level of difficulty in acquiring adequate development funding, challenges in securing suitable sites, and a general lack of sector experience and knowledge.”
Tags: new zealand