The Prime Minister is visiting a Queenstown skifield to mark the beginning of the ski season.
NZSki chief executive Paul Anderson and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at The Remarkables skifield. Photo: RNZ / Tim Brown
Jacinda Ardern has met with NZSki chief executive Paul Anderson and other skifield staff at The Remarkables this morning.
The tourist resort is upbeat as it prepares for its first uninterrupted ski season since the pandemic began.
However, those in the hospitality and tourism sectors are grappling with a critical worker shortage, with estimates up to a third of positions may be vacant.
Fergburger Group general manager Stephen Bradley yesterday said that NZSki had been able to secure staff thanks to the government going out of its way to make that happen.
But hospitality and other tourism operators need that support too, he said.
"We're going to miss winter. We are going to miss profits. We're going to miss a successful winter and unless the government starts to change immigration policy and helps us out like they helped NZSki out - we're going to miss summer this year too."
At present there are estimated to be more than 1000 job vacancies in Queenstown - almost 10 percent of the town's population.
Paul Anderson (right) and Jacinda Ardern (centre) Photo: RNZ / Tim Brown
Ardern said the government was taking advice from its experts on mandatory mask wearing in schools and keeping a close eye on what was happening in hospitals around the country.
There have been growing calls from those in the health sector to move the country back into red traffic light settings as hospitals are overrun with multiple waves of winter illness.
Traffic light settings were being regularly reviewed, Ardern said.
Covid case numbers, hospitalisations and those in ICU had dropped since the move to orange settings, she said.