The Covid-19 pandemic and resulting international travel restrictions will be worse for Kaikōura's tourism industry than the 2016 earthquake, a local operator says.
Kauahi Ngapora of Whale Watch Kaikōura closed up his business on March 27 and hasn't re-opened since.
The town was hit by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in November 2016, which blocked access and temporarily closed off the town's access to its most valuable commodity - tourists.
Now, Mr Ngapora says it is happening again, but on an even greater scale.
"Kaikōura is still recovering from that earthquake, so to have Covid come along is a pretty massive blow because Covid is easily going to be a lot more challenging than what we experienced through the earthquakes," Mr Ngapora said.
"Crisis after crisis is really having a toll on Kaikōura - this is a crisis that is going to impact everybody."
Mr Ngapora said about half the town is employed in tourism, and if a shift to domestic-only tourism is put in place, that could mean downsizing his company by up to 80 per cent.
"The impact on our community is really going to be devastating."
Mr Ngapora said he'd like to see the Government engaging on a more individual basis with town and communities which have been significantly impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak, rather than adopting a "one-size-fits-all" approach.
"What we want to encourage the Government to do is to engage directly with communities, so with businesses in those communities, to develop specific solutions for the communities - especially those who have a high exposure to tourism, such as Kaikōura," he said.
"We really need to find solutions than can tide businesses over for at least 12 months until there's an opportunity for tourism to actually recover.
"For our business, our domestic market in a really good year makes up 20 per cent - even if we could maintain 20 per cent of our historical domestic market, that's a very small proportion of the revenue we generate."
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