Record cruise ship visitor numbers for Akaroa 'well over happy balance point'

Sunday, 3 June 2018

Akaroa is gearing up for its busiest cruise ship season yet, but there are concerns the towns infrastructure is not up to the job.

Akaroa is battening down the hatches for the biggest year of cruise ship visits the Canterbury colonial town has ever had, and it's expected to cause tired infrastructure to creak under the load.

There are 91 cruise ships scheduled to visit during the 2018/19 season, which runs from October to early April, up from 75 in the 2017/18 season and 77 in the 2016/17 season. It represents over 200,000 passengers and nearly 81,000 crew descending on the quiet seaside town, population 624 at the 2013 census.

Locals have been calling for better infrastructure to cope with increased visitor numbers for years.

Banks Peninsula Community Board chairwoman Pam Richardson said this years schedule was 'well over the happy balance point' between tourist numbers and the limits of Akaroa's infrastructure.

It's an ongoing problem for the colonial town, which last year was dubbed 'Tack-aroa' by locals concerned about the number of souvenir shops in the village. Locals have been fighting for years to get the Christchurch City Council to invest in more infrastructure.

There are 91 cruise ship visits scheduled for Akaroa between October and early April, up from 75 last season.

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Richardson said the board approached the council last week about providing more infrastructure, including extra toilet facilities, rubbish collection and traffic management through the town.

'It's not fair on that community to be imposing such a large number of tourists on the town when we haven't got that infrastructure.'

She said the three toilet blocks in Akaroa were built a long time ago and where not up to standard, and there were ongoing complaints about the standard of the buildings.

The narrow roads were 'chaotic' during tourist season as they were not built for big buses, Richardson said. An intersection on the main street is number one on the council's wish-list for pedestrian safety upgrades, dependant on funding allocation in the long term plan, the council's 10-year budget.

Richardson said the town needed tourists to stay viable, but needed to find a 'happy balance'.

Akaroa District Promotions chairman Andrew Dalglish said it was 'very hard to get some council spend to just make the place tidy and get the infrastructure we need'.

He said there had been talk of trying to avoid scheduling two ships in the harbour on the same day, which put a lot of pressure on the town, but it had not happened this season with about 10 two-ship days scheduled.

NZ Cruise Association chief executive Kevin O'Sullivan said Akaroa was 'somewhere in the middle' of New Zealand's cruise destinations in terms of passenger number growth, with Auckland and Tauranga both well ahead.

He said it was known as an easy area to do business, and the French influence 'goes down a treat', with the only drawback being there was nowhere for ships to dock at the wharf, instead having to ferry in customers on smaller boats from out in the harbour.

Before the Christchurch earthquakes, Akaroa hosted about half a dozen cruise ships annually. Quake damage to Lyttelton Port meant many ships started stopping in Akaroa instead.

The Lyttelton Port Company has plans for a $56 million cruise berth which was due to open in 2020, before it put its resource consent on hold to refine the design and minimise construction impact on rare Hector's dolphins. Lyttelton has about a dozen cruise ship visits scheduled for the coming season.

O'Sullivan said Akaroa would not miss out when the Lyttelton berth was built. He said the bigger ships would go to Lyttelton while the mid-range ships were likely to continue visiting Akaroa. Currently the largest cruise ships do not go to Akaroa.

Akaroa was voted top cruise port in New Zealand and Australia last season in the annual TripAdvisor cruise awards.