Hamurana Springs charge for tour groups

Aerial view of Hamurana Springs.

Money to help maintain area

Tourism operators taking groups to Hamurana Springs will now be charged $10 per head, as Te Tahuhu o Tawakeheimoa Trust looks for dynamic ways to raise revenue for the upkeep and maintenance of the area.

Hamurana Springs was returned to Ngati Rangiwewehi as part of a multimillion-dollar treaty settlement last year. It is now governed by the trust on behalf of the iwi.

The trust's general manager Te Rangikaheke Bidois said tour groups had been charging their clients for visits to free sites.

"We suspect that they are charging offshore or charging their visitors for our free activities, and by free activities I mean things like Kuirau Park and going to Ohinemutu and I think they have Hamurana on the books. These are groups coming off cruise liners.

"We obviously missed the 2014/15 summer to hook into their group tours, so they are all telling us the ones that are charging to come to Rotorua are calling in as a stopover on the way out. We do have a plan in place to work through that and capture that market for 2015/16 summer season.

"They [the charges] are immediate ... but we are socialising them, [tour operators] this is for real; we are not going away. We need to transfer the costs of running the place back to people who are charging their customers or clients and then not transferring it on."

She said visits to the springs would remain free for the general public.

"It will still be free for locals, and as we grow and develop the place and introduce more commercial aspects ourselves, those will be used to generate income. It's about catching the commercial groups that have been coming to Hamurana for a number of years.

"The types of popular family things that we may introduce ... we want to adopt the same practices as many of the other places, like discounts for locals."

Money made from the fees would be put back into Hamurana Springs, she said.

"Most of it will be the bread and butter stuff. The wonderful comments we have had from people in general about the improvements that they have seen, and that's only the start; the money will be ploughed back into Hamurana and into us being able to have maintenance, updating and improving all the time.

"We have some small-scale developments, like the cabins and a couple of other things that will be introduced.

"The trust is looking at a cafeteria. This is coming along a little bit quicker than we intended, mainly because of the feedback from the public, saying we could use coffee and tea and food. One of the biggest issues for us is the ablution block, the toilet facilities. That's something we will be working with over time.

"We do have a couple of major projects, not at liberty to talk about those yet. One of those will be becoming part of the tour packages and linking it with a couple of other tourism places around and becoming part of that. Learning how to work with organisations and by September/October we are hoping we will be part of two or three tour packages, and people will be, by that time, used to the charging."