The Supreme Award at Wednesday night’s Tourism Industry Aotearoa awards went to South Island-based nature tour company RealNZ, which also won the Tourism Environment category and the Tourism Excellence award for a large business. The company runs the TSS Earnslaw Lake Cruise and Queenstown Jet Boat, and Cardrona Alpine Resort.
Rotorua tourism venture Te Pā Tū, which recently featured in NBR’s ‘The changing face of Māori tourism’ was a double winner on the night, taking out the Tourism Excellence award for a small to medium business and the Visitor Experience category.
There were 120 entries to the awards, with 47 finalists and 11 final winners.
In the first three months of this financial year, the operating deficit before gains and losses was more than $600 million higher than forecast in the May Budget.
Both tax revenue and spending were close to forecast and the higher-than-expected deficit reflected weaker results from Crown entities, particularly Health New Zealand. Once gains and losses were stripped out, the operating deficit was $2.2 billion, close to the Budget forecast. Net gains on financial instruments of $4.7b were much stronger than forecast, although non-financial instruments recorded net losses of $2.7b. This was made up of losses on the Emissions Trading Scheme of $1.5b and net actuarial losses on the Accident Compensation Corporation liability of $1.2b. Net core Crown debt was higher than forecast at $177.6b, which largely reflected a worse-than-expected cash deficit.