It's 5.8% of GDP, 20.4% of exports. [0]

That's a large figure, but it's not as if New Zealand lacks any kind of other industry. There's a massive primary industries (dairy, meat, logging, wine, plus others) where the country hasn't yet fully exploited it's opportunities yet for secondary value-add processing.

As a completely anecdotal observation, most tourists go to the South Island, where roughly a fifth of the population lives. The North Island is four times as densely populated. This disparity sometimes leads people to believe that country is entirely dependant on tourism, with a few sheep thrown in.

[0] https://tia.org.nz/about-the-industry/quick-facts-and-figure...

>That's a large figure, but it's not as if New Zealand lacks any kind of other industry

It's also 15% of employment though, which isn't surprising because there's a lot of low wage service work done in that sector, it employs a huge chunk of the population.

For reference, both in terms of GDP contribution and employment that is larger than the contribution of the entire automotive industry to Germany.

And being German and seeing how people are starting to get worried about the economy, I can't see this working long term politically.

If you tell people in the tourism industry they now need to become dairy farmers at the other end of the country I think you'll be surprised how quickly the country opens up again.

I'd imagine a big issue would be dealing with shipping and business travel, besides having to write off 6% of your GDP. The disease spreads so rapidly, one case of a dock yard worker coming into close contact with a crew member, or a surface they touched, and commutes by bus each day, and you lock down your whole country again.

> with a few sheep thrown in.

It's a lot more nuanced than that, they're fluffy and warm on those cold winter nights

New Zealanders will be able to patronize their own tourist industry, as a start. Then there is talk of allowing travel between Australia and New Zealand, because Australia also has low case numbers. Other countries also are getting to low case numbers, so those could also be added to the list in time.

Maybe even tourists "from anywhere" could be allowed to visit if they just agree to isolate upon entry for N days first. Private hotels and resorts could offer isolation packages. For many tourists, travelling to New Zealand is already expensive so they usually come for longer because it's a once-in-a-lifetime trip... adding N days of isolation to the start of the trip might not be so bad, especially if there are good deals to be had.

For me, the biggest question is whether visitors will be able to get travel / health insurance to cover them in New Zealand. I suppose the New Zealand government could sell such insurance, or they could back a private insurer.

Years ago I used to spend time in NZ when I was part of the US Antarctic program which stages out of Christchurch. In the late 90's when I was going down there, one of the airlines had my favorite promotion ever: for NZ$99 (about USD$59) they would give you a round trip ticket to somewhere. You'd find out where you were going after you bought the ticket, and they'd guarantee it was a same day round trip. I always thought what an incredibly fun and cheap way to spend the day in a beautiful country.

"For me, the biggest question is whether visitors will be able to get travel / health insurance to cover them in New Zealand."

Or the NZ healthcare system could just cover visitors with the understanding that the benefit outweighs the cost?

One of our larger markets is Australia, so we're looking at establishing a trans-Tasman "bubble", when they get it under control too. Other countries would be added based on their status - Taiwan has been mentioned.

But who knows, we could see a large upsurge in domestic tourism given our lack of foreign travel options - although that would require some pain in our tourism industry, as prices tend to be considered excessive by Kiwis.

In 2018 domestic tourism was $23B, international $17B (excluding airfares). So we were already more than half domestic. Since international travel is severely restricted now, expect domestic tourism to increase. Australia was more than half of our inbound international tourism, and there's a good chance we'll be able to resume that. So the tourism industry will suffer but it need not collapse.

If there ends up being a NZ-AU bubble, as is being talked about, that is likely to allow some tourism. That might grow to include other Asia Pacific counties with good virus stats.

It needs to be sustainable until there is either a vaccine or a cure, which is not going to take forever.

It doesn't have to be incredibly sustainable. It only has to hold up until there's a treatment or a vaccine available. Since there's not really any tourism happening for a while anyway, NZ will be relatively fine for a long time with this strategy.

New Zealand has vast natural resources and a very small population. They will be fine without tourism. Of course it will have an impact... you'll see more people on old Androids than iPhone 11 but they will be fine.

Hmm, mainly water and soil tbh. We're not exactly flush with mineral deposits - a few gold mines here and there, but most of our coal deposits are low quality lignite, and our current government has already signalled where we're heading by banning new offshore oil/gas permits.

That said, we have a strong software development scene, and I'd like to see that grow more.

By natural resources I meant agricultural productivity.