Australians will be able to take a holiday to New Zealand for the upcoming Easter school holidays, as the country fast-tracks the return of tourism.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced the decision to bring forward the opening of the border – from the previously flagged date of July 2022 – in a bid to “accelerate the economic recovery from COVID-19”.
Aussies will be able to travel across the ditch for an isolation-free holiday, effective 13 April 2022 (technically, from 11:59pm, 12 April). Vaccinated travellers from visa-waiver countries, including the UK, US, Japan, Germnay, Korea and Singapore will follow suit – and others with valid visitor visas – starting 2 May (precisely, from 11:59pm 1 May).
“Closing our border was one of the first actions we took to stop COVID-19 two years ago. It did the job we needed. But now that we’re highly vaccinated and predicted to be off our Omicron peak, it’s now safe to open up,” PM Ardern said today .
“Reopening in time for the upcoming Australian school holidays will help spur our economic recovery in the short term and is good news for the winter ski season.”
“Trans-Tasman travellers have historically made up 40 per cent of our international arrivals, with around 1.5 million Australians visiting each year,” she said.
“While we know it will take some time to see tourism scale up again, today’s announcement will be a welcome boost for our tourism operators who have done it harder than many over the last two years.”
Ardern noted that New Zealand’s “strong health response” to COVID-19 will be viewed positively by travellers who will be “discerning about where they will go in the short term”.
“We know that traveller numbers will be below pre-COVID levels for a while and tourism globally will take time to rebound, but today’s announcement means we’re ready to go, so haere mai welcome back,” Ardern added.
