Quote Originally Posted by SBQ View Post
As I said before, i'm still talking to those in my circle that are clueless of the impact this virus would have on the economy. Too may enjoying Xbox at home... not a lot of productivity going on but they treat it as a 'holiday'. Well what if at the end of the holiday their job is not there? No one plans ahead, all going on 'hope' while watching the Ms Ardern speech of the day.

I can't say immigration would be that hot from now on. How will tourism come back to NZ if AirNZ says even after 5 years they will never get back their 'international routes' like they were few months ago?

There was a short moment back in February where I though to take my money and buy more NZ real estate. The inconvenience of owning more was what put me off and instead, exchanged the vast majority of my cash into USD and set it to my US broker. (I discussed this in another post); the process was not straight forward but hindsight.. WELL worth it - this week I hope to invest the remainder of the cash.
Slightly off topic but yesterday I spoke to two people working in tourism overseas. One has a whale watching business in the North Atlantic. Last year they (him and others) took our 108,000 customers. They are forecasting 7,000 this year, most of them already done.
The other one is a pilot in a port in the sub-antarctic where cruise vessels dock for Antarctic trips. They have been getting 110-140 cruise ships between Oct-Apr in recent years. Next season they expect "less than 10".
Both of the above examples are venture/outdoor type tourists, like majority that visits NZ is. This is the scale we are talking about. A complete collapse for potentially a long time to come.