The Aratere on the Cook Strait (file image).
Photo: RNZ / Rebekah Parsons-King
Marlborough businesses are warning the region and the entire South Island are starting to miss out on tourism dollars due to the unreliability of the Cook Strait ferries.
A power failure on Bluebridge’s Connemara ship on Thursday night is the latest in a spate of ferry breakdowns.
Acting head of the Marlborough Chamber of Commerce Stephen Waters said the continued problems on the ferries are making both holiday-makers and tourists nervous about booking a ferry to Picton.
“People are starting to then fly into other ports, not go through Auckland and travel down the country, across the Strait. They’re going to fly down to other ports and do the South Island, and we might not even see them in Marlborough so we’re going to lose those tourism dollars.”
Waters said the government needed to clarify how it planned to shore up the beleaguered services after cancelling Kiwirail’s iRex ferry project.
Waters said the iReX ferries would have been “the ideal solution” but he understood they were unaffordable.
“They were brand new ferries with larger freight capacity as well as roll on rail – which saves on handling costs … we understand it wasn’t affordable but [now] we need to know when will we get news ones – otherwise there will be a period of uncertainty of three or four years.”
Waters said the current services were not reliable for freight or tourism, and Marlborough needed to know when new ferries would be on their way.
“I mean it is an extension of State Highway 1. We require that certainty and if people are going to move away from using it, then it will impact tourism. Another three or four years [wait for improved ferries] is just too long.”
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