How Tourism Holdings circumvented US-Canada tariffs
'The high season is looking like it will be challenging [in the US],' THL chief executive Grant Webster told Markets with Madison.
A recovery could occur if Americans decided to travel domestically and rent motorhomes, he said.
'We'll have to wait and see because the domestic market books really late.
'I think that pullback that we're seeing is, in essence, a timing delay. I think people who were going to go to the US are still either going to travel somewhere, or they're going to travel to the US at a later time.'
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Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Queenstown's first couple of ice hockey
Queenstown ice hockey is much the richer for a couple from the sport's powerhouse nations, the United States and Canada. Both 37, Kellye Nelson and Colin McIntosh coincidentally both arrived in Queenstown in 2017, each intending on just a short stay. However, they soon met and fell for each other, and have since become huge contributors to Queenstown's two national league teams — and have also started representing their adopted country. From Lino Lakes in Minnesota, in the US, Kellye's backyard was, literally, a lake that froze in winter, "so that's where I found my love for skating". "And you kind of had to play ice hockey if you lived in Minnesota." She did dabble in other sports — she and her dad even started lacrosse at her high school — but hockey won out. As for its attraction, Kellye, who was coached by her dad, says "I'm very competitive and I love being able to get in there — you're essentially learning a new way to walk — but for me it's more the community and the teammates I've met". "I've never met a bad hockey player." Kellye played division three for an American university but was also away from the sport while studying in Prague, in the Czech Republic. After a year in Australia she had a five-year sales job in the US, and was then sitting out a non-compete period for another job when she decided instead to take a break in NZ — "I remembered NZ was a place Americans could do a working holiday before they were 30". Arriving in early 2017, she started at a surf camp up north before wending her way to Queenstown, not even knowing there was ice hockey here. Meanwhile, Colin also grew up with the sport, playing road hockey and ice hockey with his three brothers in La Pas, Manitoba. "Hockey was my life, still is. It's just the best sport in the world." As to why, "it's the hardest sport to play, the skill it takes is just insane". Having played professionally in North America and Europe, he heard from a friend about the Stampede, then after making inquiries was contacted by stalwart player Mike McRae. Two weeks later he was on a flight to Queenstown to become a Stampede import. He'd only intended staying a season, but meeting Kellye, who'd started managing the ice rink, changed things. After that Stampede season they travelled to Germany to play there before returning in 2018 — Colin then had the following offseason in Sweden. While Colin's Stampede career's so far run to 100-plus games with 100-plus goals, Kellye initially played two seasons for Dunedin-based Southern Storm before founding the Wakatipu Wild. From day one she's been the captain and McIntosh the coach — they note many players take some time to realise they're a couple. "It's been a lot of hard work and tapping my friends to support us because it's not a cheap sport," Kellye says. Colin notes the Wild's just continued improving year upon year. He experienced a very tough 2022 when he couldn't play after developing pericarditis in reaction to a Covid vaccine. "There were times where my heart rate was 200 beats per minute, just walking from the couch to the kitchen [was hard]. "There were a good six months of darkness because I couldn't leave the house, couldn't go to the rink, and that rink's always been my solace." When he returned to play he was 15kg-20kg overweight, and only got back to his best the past two seasons. He's again been able to help the Stampede stay on stop, and, this year, his second with the Ice Blacks, was their player of the tournament at their division's worlds in Dunedin. "To do that in front of my dad was definitely an honour." Having waited longer for her citizenship — "I was one of the first Kiwis to pledge the oath to the king" — Kellye made her Ice Fernz debut at this year's worlds, also in Dunedin. For this couple, though, encouraging others to step up has been as important as their own contributions. Colin even has his own equipment business, Enigma Hockey, aimed at selling gear as cheaply as possible. Kellye's also been thrilled to have her parents over recently for the first time in eight years, "and I got to play with dad on one of the social league nights — he even scored a goal". Managing Harcourts' holiday homes division, she's not planning to live in North America again. However, Colin, operations director for the Whakatipu Youth Trust, misses family back home, and while Queenstown's "definitely a long-term spot, I just don't know if I could live here forever".
Otago Daily Times
11-07-2025
- Otago Daily Times
She's maybe got travel's best job
Despite Queenstown's reputation for adventure tourism, it's little known we're home to New Zealand's largest and most globally diverse adventure travel company. Active Adventures, supreme winner at the last Queenstown Business Awards, runs high-value small-group tours the world over — 98% of its clients are Americans — and turns over tens of millions of dollars a year. Started in 1996, it's been led since 2019 by inspiring CEO Wendy van Lieshout, who worked her way from the ground up. In fact, when she moved from the Netherlands to Christchurch, aged 8, she didn't even know English. However, she had a good education, finishing with a BA in English and art history. After a short stint in an art gallery, she became a receptionist and typist at travel company Thomas Cook in 1994 — "I was literally typing itineraries before there were any computers". "I did not start off knowing travel was [to be] my career, but I was very firmly in it very quickly. "It was a very inspirational field to be in because you're selling people dreams." After becoming a Thomas Cook travel consultant she then had 21 years in leadership roles in outbound travel, initially in Christchurch, then Auckland. In many roles she turned companies around — in one case the culture had been "very poor and the team was desperate for leadership and direction". She was even handed a GM marketing role with no marketing experience, so she took a university course. "I was very driven to succeed, also very much in a man's world, so I think that spurred me to try and sort of break through. "But honestly it's just hard work, taking opportunities, having connections and having a bit of nous, really. "If you talk about why I do what I do, I love to watch people fly and grow and get better and be inspired, especially women, because in tourism, women tend to be at the lower parts." In her CV she talks of having clear opinions, an open and transparent approach, an ability to solve complex issues quickly, confidence and thinking outside the square, qualities making her "a world-class CEO". When approached to become Active Adventures' CEO in 2019, Wendy says she initially didn't think she'd be interested as her perception was it wasn't of the scale of companies in Auckland. However, she was impressed its private equity owner had a strong growth drive, and took the job. On December 4 that year she presented a growth plan for the board, only for Covid to shut down travel soon after. Smartly, it bought a US company it had partnered with, Austin Adventures, which did national park tours in the US, "because all of our customers were stuck in America". Then, last year Active Adventures added US company Discovery Bicycle Tours which operates in the US and Europe. New Zealand stayed shut "way too bloody long", Wendy says, "but, no, we've bounced back, particularly with the benefit of the two American companies". Nowadays they employ almost 200 staff, including guides, and have offices also in Christchurch, Peru, Spain and Montana and Vermont in the US. Wendy — a small shareholder herself — says she loves her team's fortnightly global calls where staff get in front of screens worldwide. "It's just this super-cool, powerful culture." Compared with earlier roles where corporate travel, particularly, was a commodity, "our purpose is inspiring people to live a more adventurous life". "The most rewarding thing is every day, almost, we circulate the reviews that are coming through from our guests, and we're changing people's lives." As CEO, though, Wendy says "when you're moving 5000 guests a year, there's always the fear of something going wrong". "We have an extremely good safety record and it is the number one thing ahead of anything. "That weighs heavily because you're responsible for active retirees who are going up mountains — but we've got structure upon structure in place and amazing people who do great things." Away from work, Wendy, who's 53, has two children, 19 and 13, and spends most of her spare time on a six-hectare lifestyle block she and her husband have at Arrow Junction, where they're replacing wildings with native vegetation. "It keeps me sane but also fit." As for her own bucket-list item from all the company's itineraries, "that's like asking me to choose a favourite child". However, she settles on a new eight-day Tuscany e-bike tour she's going on in Italy in September. "What's not to love? "E-biking, food and wine in Tuscany ... bring it on."
Otago Daily Times
09-07-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Of trade, empires and pygmy hippos
Did you know that Cyprus once had pygmy hippos? Of course you did. But do you know what happened to them? We did. As I have just discovered in a little museum on the next-to-last day of a holiday in Europe. Hippos found their way to Cyprus a couple of hundred thousand years ago, perhaps swept over with a flood from what is now Turkey. And having arrived they set about shrinking to fit their new home. By the time human beings reached the island, some 190,000 years later, the average Cypriot hippo was about the size of a large dog. And that dog seemingly made good eating, because it wasn't long before the hippo was extinct. There's a pygmy hippo skeleton in the museum, which I can study at leisure because I have the place to myself. Everybody else in this hot little tourist town is at the beach. As it happens I mainly came in for the relief of air-conditioning, but while cooling down I took the chance to study a little of the story of Cyprus — and what an instructive thing it proved to be. Cyprus is at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. As we tourists bask on the soft sand, or drink in the hot bars, or dive off boats into sapphire water, we tend to forget that this is the closest land mass to the miseries of Gaza and not that far from Iran which the Americans so love to bomb. This is a volatile part of the world, and always has been. How the first people reached Cyprus is not known but it was probably on a raft of reeds. There's a reproduction of such a thing in the museum. It does not look seaworthy, but then it only had to fluke the journey once, and that was Cyprus populated and the mini-hippo doomed. The early people lived simply. They fished and ate hippos and got by in the warm climate for a few thousand years and wrote nothing down. Time simply passed and people lived and died. Gradually more visitors arrived and settled. They developed pottery and learned to smelt copper. Links were established with the mainland of what is now Greece that prove fundamental to the island's identity. But Cyprus lay close to many different centres of power, and that proved both its glory and its curse. The prize exhibit in the museum is a trading ship. It's a replica of one found on the sea-bed in the 1960s, along with its cargo of pottery amphorae, which would have been used to transport wine and olive oil. Such vessels began to ply the eastern end of the Mediterranean about 3000 years ago and the first great sailors and traders to make use of them were the Phoenicians from what is now Lebanon. But the Phoenicians didn't bring only trade. They brought empire. Cyprus was just too juicy to resist, so they colonised it. And in doing so they set a pattern that has persisted. After the Phoenicians, the Assyrians conquered Cyprus, followed by the Egyptians, then the Persians, then the Egyptians again. Around the time of Christ, Cyprus inevitably became part of the greatest Empire the world has seen, and it remained more or less Roman until the Arabs overran it in the seventh century. Soon after that it became part of the Byzantine empire, run out of Constantinople, formerly Byzantium and now Istanbul. In the 12th century the Crusaders took Cyprus by force, ostensibly for Christianity. Richard the Lionheart gave the island to the Knights Templar who sold it to the French who later lost it to the Venetians. Othello, the Moor of Venice, was commander of the garrison here, defending the island against the Ottoman forces. In time, the Ottomans won and they held Cyprus until the outbreak of World War 1, when the British annexed it — which explains why Cypriots drive on the left and use British-style plug sockets. Eventually the British handed it over to Greece, in accordance with the population's wishes, only for the Turks to invade in 1974 and occupy the northern half of Cyprus where they remain to this day, much to the resentment of most Cypriots. And the moral of the story is that there is no moral of the story. It is simply a tale of take-what-you-can, of might-is-right, of endless greed and theft and violence from a species that, alone on this little planet, preaches the opposite. Ask the pygmy hippos. • Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
