Record day for Christchurch airport

This media release from CIAL says it all....

Monday, 3 February 2014
 
It’s a red-letter day for Christchurch Airport, with the arrival of the first China Southern Airlines flight and the release of record passenger numbers.

The direct flight from Guangzhou brought 228 Chinese visitors to celebrate Chinese New Year in the South Island and marked the first time a Dreamliner has flown commercially to Christchurch, highlighting the increasing numbers of Chinese visitors choosing the South Island over the north.
 
New Chinese travel regulations have prompted a drop-off in the overall number of tourists coming to New Zealand, though those who do come stay longer to experience the South Island, which is outperforming the rest of the country, according to Tourism New Zealand .
 
Christchurch Airport Chief Executive Malcolm Johns says the company’s ‘Welcome China’ strategy is focussed on building international arrivals from China to New Zealand via Christchurch.
 
“It’s about bringing more people here,” says Mr Johns. “Our relationship with China Southern is key to this and has been in development for some time. It is a fact that the number of Chinese visitors to the South Island of New Zealand continues to grow.
 
“Over the past decade, the South Island has been the brand engine room for New Zealand in China. Images of our breath taking scenery – mountains, lakes, wide blue skies, green open spaces and adventure-based culture - attract Chinese travellers, which is good for the whole country.
 
“Over the past couple of years, the number of Chinese visitors visiting the South Island has grown substantially. Over the past 12 months, there was a 72% increase in Chinese tourism expenditure in the South Island. That can only mean mutual economic benefit and we, for our part, are working hard to continue to deliver increasingly high levels of visitor satisfaction.”
 
New statistics released this morning reveal recent records set at Christchurch Airport.

“Our total passenger movements recorded the best December since 2009,” says Mr Johns. “December was also a record month for domestic passenger movements, better than any single month since March 2010. The week ending December 22 was the busiest we’ve had for total passenger movements since immediately after the major 2011 earthquake.
 
“All of this makes Christchurch an exciting and energising place to visit, work and play.”
 
Mr Johns says Christchurch Airport’s growth is spearheading tourism recovery in the South Island.
 
“Benefits go beyond just tourism, as many industry sectors benefit from improving volumes and increasing access to the island via the airport– airfreight users and the education sector, for example.
 
“The recent additional flights from Perth and Singapore, as well as Japan charters have added to increased volumes. Overall, aircraft are fuller than last year too, adding to the increase.
 
“Just this morning, we received preliminary passenger volumes showing Chinese nationals coming through the airport were the highest January numbers we’ve seen. Last month, 2,874 Chinese nationals arrived here internationally, with 4,599 Chinese international arrivals and departures through this airport. Of course, that excludes Chinese visitors who come through the airport on domestic flights.
 
“Though the exact timing of Chinese New Year changes from year to year, statistics show the number of Chinese travellers choosing to spend their special holiday in the South Island is definitely on the rise.”

petert@cecc.org.nz

www.cecc.org.nz

Dr Grordborts Extraordinary Exhibition!

Christchurch has been abuzz over the past week with the World Buskers festival attracting large audiences and providing much light relief for a city that welcomes it.

We are also privileged to be the first New Zealand city to host Dr Grordborts Extraordinary Exhibition which is currently on show at the Colombo Complex. If you like the zany world of the Weta Workshop creative team then you will love this.

The Prime Minister opened the exhibition last week and was seen being interviewed about his choice of Ray Gun. Richard Taylor also spoke about the creativity of Weta team member, Greg Broadmore, who dreamed up the zany world of Dr Grordbort.

The exhibition is on for a limited time. Go see it if you can, corner of Elgin and Colombo Streets

Street Art is also  making its presence felt on walls around the inner city and a supporting exhibition at the Museum. Go Banksy!

It is so good to see people with passion putting real effort into diversifying the city’s entertainment offering. This is something we expect to see growing as the city increasingly engages in recovery.

It just adds to the increasingly diverse offering in our increasingly diverse city.

petert@cecc.org.nz

www.cecc.org.nz

Welcome to 2014!

We are anticipating big things this year.

As a country we are in good economic shape and there is a general expectation that things are going to remain buoyant throughout 2014.

We have the complication of a national election later this year and it is clear that we are already in election mode. Expect election paralysis to set in to Government from about  April on. History tells us that this should not materially impact on economic activity.

From a regional perspective we are anticipating a ramp up in an already busy local economy driven primarily, and initially, by major housing repairs and rebuilds. We are not out of the woods yet with respect to insurance settlements with just under half of the house insurance policies settled, and about 70% of commercial insurance resolved. The 80,000 homes dealing with out-of-scope insurance matters (pools, driveways etc.) add further complexity, as do significant issues relating to land stability, land levels, land quality and flooding risks. There are still some very complicated and significant issues to be resolved on the housing insurance front. As affected insured, we are all aware of that! Insurance resolution has its own set of cascading constraints!

We are  however, far enough through housing insurance settlements for a big injection into rebuilds and repairs by about the end of the first quarter of this year. This will be driven mainly by owners of homes who have cash settled in late 2013 and will ramp up activity after the time lag caused by planning, contracting  building professionals and the consenting processes. It is generally accepted that that total damage to housing stock in Canterbury is somewhere around, and probably above, $22 billion (out of an estimated total damage cost of $40 billion). That, whichever way you look at it, is a lot of money!

Reflecting over the Christmas break on what lies ahead, I am still of the opinion that we do not understand the scale of what we are going in to and we are not yet thinking strategically enough to be in a position to cope with what lies ahead.

As we engage in a significant increase in housing rebuild and repair, we will also see, more slowly, a ramp up in commercial rebuilds.

Big positive challenges await us and they will certainty test our capabilities.

petert@cecc.org.nz

www.cecc.org.nz

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

I am away for the next few weeks catching my breath after a pretty busy year. My blogs will be back  to a weekly update in late January. In the mean time I wish you all the best for the festive season  and a big and prosperous 2014. If you are getting a break, enjoy it!. I intend to.

petert@cecc.org.nz

www.cecc.org.nz

 

Go visit Perth!

Last week I had the good fortune to travel on the Air New Zealand inaugural flight from Christchurch to Perth. It was a great experience and I commend the airline and the destination to you. 

Perth is a city that is reinventing itself. Christchurch is a city that is recreating itself. The parallels are compelling! 

Perth has a population of 1.5million, 70,000 of whom are kiwis. 80,000 more kiwis visit the city every year. Perth is growing by about 50,000 per year and the affluence shows. 

We took some time out to visit Rottnest Island, about 40 kms off the coast. It is the home of the Quokka and I thought you might be interested in these pictures. A very pretty and interesting island.

Air New Zealand is flying direct to Perth from Christchurch twice a week until at least April 2014.


One week to go before the Christmas season really sets in. I wish you all the best for the festive season and a highly productive 2014. From a

Christchurch perspective it is going to be a big one!

petert@cecc.org.nz

www.cecc.org.nz

We've been through some interesting times in Christchurch

If you look at disasters elsewhere in the world it is not unheard of to have a 30% depression in business activity, for example following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. It didn’t happen in Christchurch.  

There are four fundamental reasons why it didn’t happen and they are really important reasons for all of us to learn from.

The first reason was Central Governance.

Post the 4 September 2010 earthquake, I was on Morning Report on 6 September 2010 from a broken Christchurch saying that we were really in trouble as we had no sewerage, no electricity, no water, we couldn’t get up and down the street, and there was no business activity to speak. I said if we don’t do something about that we are going to have business collapse within a week. As most businesses, particularly small businesses, rely on their cash flow to pay their employees and if you can’t pay your employees you will be out of business. It turns out Bill English was listening to Morning Report and he rang me immediately and said “I understand what you are saying and I get it, what do you want us to do?” I said “I think the Government needs to treat Christchurch as a place where there is business as usual – but where there is no business.“ What that meant was pumping cash in and protecting cash flows. Bill said “he got that and how much?” I said “$15m”. He said “how many businesses?” I advised “2,500”. We agreed we would see how we would go.

As it turned out post September there were 2,300 businesses and 11,700 employees who received $10.2m and it was done on a high trust basis i.e. name of company, IRD number, how many employees and the cash was given. There was money going into bank accounts during the week of the September earthquake.
Post 22 February Bill English rang and said “don’t worry Peter we know this is much more serious and we are going to up the earthquake support subsidy from $350 per employee per week, to $500 per employee per week and it’s going to apply to all companies, not just small companies”.

On 24 February, two days after the earthquake, there was money sitting in bank accounts. You just had to supply your company name, IRD number, and how many employees. Since then the Government has done some work on fraud, because this is real high trust issue, and the number of companies taking advantage of the situation was lower than the fraud rate of the structured unemployment benefit. That says something about how people responded. Post 22 February there was $200m cash put into companies. I’m still getting phone calls today from companies who say that if it hadn’t been for the earthquake support subsidy they would have gone out of business. Post 22 February it was thousands of businesses (something like 15,000) that were recipients of that money. It was a really significant thing to protect the fabric of business and to protect the relationship between the employer and employee. The other option would have been to put in place a ramped up unemployment benefit so that the employees continued to get paid, but that would have destroyed the fabric of the relationship between the employee and the company; and that would have destroyed the company – which would have been a real economic disaster.

So the first lesson is cash.

Click here to read more.

petert@cecc.org.nz

www.cecc.org.nz