{"id":147918,"date":"2021-05-03T22:07:29","date_gmt":"2021-05-03T22:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=194056"},"modified":"2021-05-03T22:07:29","modified_gmt":"2021-05-03T22:07:29","slug":"cook-islands-pm-on-travel-bubble-today-we-start-to-rebuild-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/05\/03\/cook-islands-pm-on-travel-bubble-today-we-start-to-rebuild-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Cook Islands PM on travel bubble: \u2018Today, we start to rebuild\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Charlie Dreaver<\/a>, RNZ News<\/a> political reporter<\/em><\/p>\n

Cook Island businesses holding out for much needed tourists have now got a reprieve with a travel bubble with New Zealand less than two weeks away.<\/p>\n

It will start on May 17, with Air New Zealand offering flights from May 18.<\/p>\n

During yesterday\u2019s announcement, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said there had been enormous sacrifices made to keep covid-19 out and communities safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur economy has been devastated, today we start our journey of recovery. Today, we get back into business and today, we start to rebuild,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cook Islands Tourism Industry Council president Liana Scott said the bubble announcement was a relief as the wait had been dire for many businesses and financial support from the government due to run out next month.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of them have mentioned to me, if it takes longer than May, they don\u2019t think they can hang in any longer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been lucky enough to have the government support through a wage subsidy and, without that, business would not have been able to continue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Businesses begin preparations<\/strong>
Scott said businesses had already begun to prepare for overseas guests.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome properties have been in hibernation, so they have been closed completely and I\u2019ve already seen on Facebook they\u2019ve been having staff doing some rotational shifts, getting into the rooms, servicing aircons and those sorts of things,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said some hotels have even been making their own jam while they waited for shipments of individual breakfast spreads to come in for guests<\/p>\n

But she said some business had lost workers to New Zealand as the wage subsidy was only enough to survive on let alone pay the mortgage and other bills.<\/p>\n

When the one way bubble was announced in January, 304 Cook Island residents left either for a short term stay or permanently.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of that young working population has moved to New Zealand to do some seasonal and permanent roles and I think filling those roles will be quite difficult,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Three flights a week<\/strong>
Once the bubble is up and running Air New Zealand will fly to the Cook Islands two or three times a week.<\/p>\n

The airline expects to step that up to daily from July in time for the school holidays.<\/p>\n

However, National Party leader Judith Collins said the government had not been moving fast enough to reconnect with other Pacific countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact is these countries have almost no other income other than remittances, it is simply deplorable that the government has not moved faster on this.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be hard when there\u2019s no cases in these other countries,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In the past, Samoa\u2019s Prime Minster has been reluctant to open up the borders following the measles outbreak and Tonga\u2019s Prime Minister has said a vaccination programme needs to be done first.<\/p>\n

Nuie\u2019s Premier Dalton Tagelagi is waiting to see how successful the Cook Islands bubble is before lobbying for one of its own.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said it makes the most sense for realm countries to be the next countries in line for a bubble, but the decision is \u201cin the hands of those countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Print<\/a><\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charlie Dreaver, RNZ News political reporter Cook Island businesses holding out for much needed tourists have now got a reprieve with a travel bubble with New Zealand\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":400,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2625,2626,338,20821,2083,1150,1077,5,365,387,255,4,12,14,368,1131,2295,2317,2627],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/400"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147919,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147918\/revisions\/147919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}