“I think from day one we always needed to speak out” Says Eve Lawrence General manager of Touring Brands at Haka Tourism Group. She acknowledges that the pandemic was a situation that no one had faced before, but after 20th months Lawrence believes it’s time to call the New Zealand government to task. “I think we all need to speaking out more, because its absolute insanity to think that we can continue to operate with this much uncertainty.”
In this conversation Eve Lawrence, talks about how the vaccine mandates are dividing New Zealand, and how COVID restrictions and absence of a recovery roadmap are destroying its tourism & events industries.
She describes how New Zealand has gone from successfully attracting business away from Australian destinations with its successful “Pure New Zealand” campaign, to now losing business to those same regions.