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November 30, 2022
Border tests tough for tourism workforce
Adam Gifford
Posted On November 30, 2022
Download AudioMāori Tourism chair Dale Stephens says a change in immigration settings which makes it harder for foreign workers to bring family into New Zealand will make it harder to fill jobs in the sector.
He says while Maori operators tend to hire tangata whenua, they rely on having a strong overall tourism sector to bring visitor into the country.
“Unfortunately in the tourism sector what you see is the type of people we want to come into the country aren’t covered by the green category or the work to residency category so we’ve got to be so careful – we want to get tourism back up and running, we want to get people back into the country, but we’ve got to let them come in to work with us as well,” Mr Stephens says.
\The tourism sector is on track to be back to 63 percent of pre-Covid levels by the end of the summer.
