Whakaari White Island eruption trial: Tour company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for access

By Felix Walton of RNZ

A tour company with exclusive access to Whakaari/White Island paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees every year.

White Island Tours general manager Patrick O’Sullivan gave evidence in WorkSafe’s ongoing trial against the island’s three owners, their company, and two other tourism companies.

Multiple helicopter companies also paid fees to conduct tours of the island, but only White Island Tours could carry visitors via boat. White Island Tours previously pleaded guilty to charges laid by WorkSafe after an eruption killed 22 people and injured 25 others in 2019.

Prosecutor for WorkSafe Michael Hodge outlined how the licensing fees were determined.

“If we look at the definition of licence fee, that’s an amount, annually, equal to 200 times the current full adult individual tour fee.”

White Island Tours also paid a 12 per cent commission for every ticket sold.

Hodge asked O’Sullivan how much his company had paid in the year before the eruption.

“Off the top of my head, it was around $500,000,” he said.

The island’s owners, Andrew, James and Peter Buttle, held meetings to discuss the state of the island, O’Sullivan said.

“Other parties would attend such as GNS Science who would often give updates on the island and its current activity,

“We aimed [to meet] once a year.”

The Buttles’ defence lawyer, James Cairney, said White Island Tours had no reason to believe it was doing anything wrong. He noted that White Island Tours was involved in meetings with government agencies to discuss future developments on Whakaari, including walking tracks and tuatara habitation.

“With all of these parties having input into Whakaari, did that give White Island Tours some comfort as to what it was doing?” he asked.

“Comfort that it was doing its tours safely, and comfort that its tours were entirely proper?”

O’Sullivan nodded.

“Because everyone knew what you were doing,” Cairney continued.

“There’s not a single party here that was surprised to learn you were regularly taking boats of people to tour an active volcano, in fact, you had been approved to do just that.”

O’Sullivan said White Island Tours had provided a safety declaration document to cruise companies through middleman Tauranga Tourism Services, which is also on trial.

“It was expected that it was going up to the ship for the passengers to view in the sale process or before disembarking the [cruise] ship,” he said.

Emails between the companies discussed when tourists should sign the declaration and whose responsibility it was to distribute them, but didn’t appear to reach a conclusion.

“I don’t think there was a response,” O’Sullivan said after reading an email questioning whether customers should be given the document on the cruise or the bus.

Survivors previously described a lack of safety warnings on the day of the eruption.