Posted on August 31, 2017
By Chris Hutching, stuff
Lyttelton business owners who met with Lyttelton Port Company last week to hear about cruise ship progress were enthusiastic about the benefits.
SuperValue owner Rob De Thier, who has been in Lyttelton three years, said business owners were enthusiastic about how vibrant it would become.
He said the LytteltonHarbour Business Association would like to learn more about which businesses tend to thrive and which don’t.
But Banks Peninsula Community Board member Felix Dawson said one of the questions was how to get tourists to spend time in Lyttelton itself.
“It was always an ongoing issue in the past when we had cruise ships about how to retain them rather than seeing them get straight on a bus.
Some would argue the city gets the benefit. That’s an issue we need to resolve. They battled with it before,” Dawson said.
Mike Rossouw who operates Jack Tar Sailing said the cruise ships would be good for Lyttelton generally but it would be good to find ways to tie them to the port town for a while.
Rosseouw did not anticipate much benefit for his own sailing business.
“If you come into port on a cruise ship I expect the last thing you want to do is sail around the harbour in a small boat,” Rossouw said.
Inland tourist operators were keen to see cruise ship visits resume as soon as possible.
Jet Thrills operator Paul Vernal who operates on the Waimakariri River said when cruise ships visited Lyttelton his company was receiving about 160 tourists a day and the number had reduced to 70.
The difficulty with catering to visitors from Akaroa was the additional travel time, and if the weather was rough they might not be able to disembark, he said.
Vernal questioned the delay in resuming cruise ship visits to Lyttelton which the port company has blamed on aNgãiTahu appeal against a major new dredging programme.
He questioned why the required dredging around the planned berth could not be carried out under existing maintenance permits.
Banks Peninsula Community Board members have also raised the question of why existing consents do not cover the dredging around the berth.
Cruise ships are able to enter Lyttelton but the Lyttelton Port Company has reiterated, “we cannot undertake the required deepening for the cruise berth under any current consent that we have”.
At last week’s the meeting with business owners the port officials said the delay until 2019 provided the opportunity to explore cost saving technology for the cruise berth.
Meanwhile, work has begun on the redevelopment of the inner harbour marina Te Ana, with capacity for 170 berths. Piling is under way and onshore work has begun ahead of expected private development of facilities.
The last official figures showed 41 of the existing 70 berth holders had applied to sign up for a new berth lease at the new cost of approximately $5000 a year.
The 2015-2016 cruise sector was worth $484m to the New Zealand economy and is forecast to grow to $490 million in the 2016-2017 season, according to industry estimates.
Australia is New Zealand’s largest source market, attracting about 133,000 visitors, followed by the US, attracting 32,000 visitors.
Source: stuff
