Welcome to our Autumn 2022 e-newsletter.
I hope you are all keeping safe and well as we continue to grapple with Omicron’s outbreak in the community.
Our focus at the Airport, like many other businesses, is on staying open while ensuring our staff and customers are safe.
This has seen us create staff bubbles to minimise the risk of our small team all becoming infected with Covid or needing to isolate at the same time, ensuring our staff have access to rapid antigen tests, and encouraging staff to get their booster shots. We also continue to manage mask wearing in the terminal for all staff and visitors and thank all of our visitors for their compliance to date.
Being in the travel and tourism business, Covid has undoubtedly affected our passenger numbers and associated revenue over the past two years. Despite that we’re pleased to still be crowned the busiest regional airport in New Zealand this summer. Between the beginning of December and the end of February we welcomed 83,000 passengers.
Over the past couple of weeks I have also really enjoyed seeing New Zealanders from Australia and the rest of the world reuniting with their friends and whanau now rules for managed isolation and quarantine have ceased. We are also gearing up to welcome back tourists to our beautiful region over the coming months.
Looking to the year ahead, like everyone, I am cautiously optimistic that we can move into a post Covid ‘new normal’.
Thank you for your continued support and patience through these challenging times.
I hope you find this newsletter insightful and we welcome any suggestions to improve future editions.
Happy reading!
Mark Thompson, CEO Nelson Airport
Autumn Update from Nelson Airport