"we’ll risk leaving our precious land to be explored only by foreign visitors who can afford to do it"
Just because "foreign visitors" can afford it doesn't mean they will pay the price required. They must value the walk more than the total cost of doing the walk. And if they do value the walk more highly than locals aren't they the one we want doing the walks? Isn't it efficient for them to be the ones getting to do the walk?
There is an abundance of great walks throughout the country that are totally free but sometimes do require one to get off their bums and actually do it. A small pack, appropriate gear, some food and water and off you go into this outdoor paradise that is New Zealand. Those that want to have an easier option can pay for the experience.
A directly relevant balloting model is the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s annual ballot for thru-hike permits. It randomly assigns applicants a place in a queue for a turn to pick their preferred start dates over the high demand hiking season (50 per day). The system’s evolved to accommodate different sized parties, different categories, and overcome the inevitable gaming attempts.
When prices cannot be optimally set, one novel way to control congestion is through quality downgrading. I wrote a piece on this some 20 years ago called "Quality and Congestion in Environmental Goods: The Road to the Wangapeka" (https://doi.org/10.1006/jeem.2001.1219) and one of the points it made was that it could be (constrained) optimal to provide different qualities of environmental goods (think Milford v Wangapeka) aimed, broadly, at international versus domestic visitors.
The grandiloquence in the Herald's claims about hut pricing tearing at our social fabric is amusing, but it has a history: Craig Potton wrote in 1998 that attitudes regarding maintaining a sense of equity between users of the conservation estate and the principle of freedom of access, "were founded and remain immersed in an ideology of open democracy where the state protects all peoples’ equal rights to wild places and which can claim a clear lineage of language, from the slogans of the French Revolution, to the United States constitution".
Thanks Martin. Yes, quality downgrading is another option in this situation. That said, DOC has pursued the opposite over the past 15 or so years, making substantial quality upgrades to the Milford Track huts. (Sharing a bunkroom with 39 others, many of them snorers, is a thing of past. Thankfully!)
Hyperbole aside, I think the NZ Herald makes a valid point about seeking fairness of access (though Potton puts it much better!) But I can't see the Herald's policy prescription (i.e. lower prices) working. A fairer allocation is not an insoluble problem - time to get creative!
Agree 100 percent, the DOC hutt fees are a tiny proportion of the total budget required to complete the trip as a whole. The limit on numbers is where the unfairness is, but limiting the numbers to fewer than 300 people (both guided and independent walkers) on the whole track at any one time (and being one way) is essentially to the experience.
Speaking of demand out stripping supply. In Canada, you can request a flag that has been flown from the parliament building, the wait list exceeds 100 years.
"we’ll risk leaving our precious land to be explored only by foreign visitors who can afford to do it"
Just because "foreign visitors" can afford it doesn't mean they will pay the price required. They must value the walk more than the total cost of doing the walk. And if they do value the walk more highly than locals aren't they the one we want doing the walks? Isn't it efficient for them to be the ones getting to do the walk?
There is an abundance of great walks throughout the country that are totally free but sometimes do require one to get off their bums and actually do it. A small pack, appropriate gear, some food and water and off you go into this outdoor paradise that is New Zealand. Those that want to have an easier option can pay for the experience.
A directly relevant balloting model is the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s annual ballot for thru-hike permits. It randomly assigns applicants a place in a queue for a turn to pick their preferred start dates over the high demand hiking season (50 per day). The system’s evolved to accommodate different sized parties, different categories, and overcome the inevitable gaming attempts.
When prices cannot be optimally set, one novel way to control congestion is through quality downgrading. I wrote a piece on this some 20 years ago called "Quality and Congestion in Environmental Goods: The Road to the Wangapeka" (https://doi.org/10.1006/jeem.2001.1219) and one of the points it made was that it could be (constrained) optimal to provide different qualities of environmental goods (think Milford v Wangapeka) aimed, broadly, at international versus domestic visitors.
The grandiloquence in the Herald's claims about hut pricing tearing at our social fabric is amusing, but it has a history: Craig Potton wrote in 1998 that attitudes regarding maintaining a sense of equity between users of the conservation estate and the principle of freedom of access, "were founded and remain immersed in an ideology of open democracy where the state protects all peoples’ equal rights to wild places and which can claim a clear lineage of language, from the slogans of the French Revolution, to the United States constitution".
Thanks Martin. Yes, quality downgrading is another option in this situation. That said, DOC has pursued the opposite over the past 15 or so years, making substantial quality upgrades to the Milford Track huts. (Sharing a bunkroom with 39 others, many of them snorers, is a thing of past. Thankfully!)
Hyperbole aside, I think the NZ Herald makes a valid point about seeking fairness of access (though Potton puts it much better!) But I can't see the Herald's policy prescription (i.e. lower prices) working. A fairer allocation is not an insoluble problem - time to get creative!
Agree 100 percent, the DOC hutt fees are a tiny proportion of the total budget required to complete the trip as a whole. The limit on numbers is where the unfairness is, but limiting the numbers to fewer than 300 people (both guided and independent walkers) on the whole track at any one time (and being one way) is essentially to the experience.
Speaking of demand out stripping supply. In Canada, you can request a flag that has been flown from the parliament building, the wait list exceeds 100 years.