Tourists scarce as travel bubbles fail to inflate

Tourists scarce as travel bubbles fail to inflate

WELLINGTON: Quarantine-free travel bubbles were hailed as tourism's "godsend“ earlier this year, but cancellations and suspensions have deflated hopes they will herald a return to pre-pandemic normality. Perhaps the world's most high-profile bubble opened between Australia and New Zealand on April 19, leading to emotional scenes as families split when borders closed almost 400 days earlier were reunited.

Since then, New Zealand has ordered partial shutdowns on four occasions due to virus scares in Australian states, the most serious of which forced Melbourne into a snap lockdown this week. A spike of COVID-19 cases in Taiwan burst its bubble with the tiny Pacific nation of Palau last week, while Hong Kong and Singapore have been struggling to stand up a quarantine-free travel arrangement for six months.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will take advantage of the trans-Tasman bubble this weekend, when he travels to New Zealand for the first time since the pandemic hit for talks with Kiwi counterpart Jacinda Ardern. The pair will meet in the South Island mountain resort of Queenstown, where Ardern has vowed to show him the sights, including adventure activities and glacier-fed lakes.

Like tourist centers everywhere, the so-called "adrenaline capital of the world“ struggled without overseas travelers,