If you haven’t booked your summer holiday plans yet, it may be too late.
From hotels and airports to hospitality, the sector is short of tens of thousands of workers.
"We’re recruiting for pretty much everything," said Stephen England-Hall, chief executive of Queenstown-based tourism company RealNZ.
"Jet boat drivers, front of house, food and beverage, hospitality, guest services, mechanics – you name it, we’ve got roles out there looking for people."
It means they’ve had to dial back on bookings, and they’re not alone.
Earlier this week, Auckland Airport announced it had 1600 roles still vacant, despite holding a job fair earlier this year.
"With thousands of jobs lying vacant across the airport system, travellers may experience longer wait times when flying this summer," a statement from the airport read.
Hotels across New Zealand are also facing staff shortages – James Doolan from Hotel Council Aotearoa says they need more than 2600 workers across the board to meet summer demand.
"When you don’t have enough workers in a hotel, bar or restaurant, you have to limit supply; you have to shut the restaurant on some nights of the week; you have to limit the number of rooms available to be sold to guests, and that’s a tragedy."
Since the border opened, around 21,200 international visitors on working holidays have arrived in the country, out of the 39,000 approved since March.
Tourism operators say there’s still a serious skill shortage.
"The immigration process is very frustrating," said England-Hall.
"Other places are easier to go and work in than we are and so really navigating the universe of policies and procedures to get a visa for New Zealand is time consuming, it’s expensive and there’s risk associated."
In a statement, Tourism Minister Stuart Nash acknowledged that an increase in visitor numbers was putting pressure on workers.
He said the Government had committed $2 million to try and build the tourism workforce domestically, holding "career expos and secondary-school education programmes across the country".
"Investing in our people and deepening the talent pool within New Zealand is vital in building the tourism workforce back up," he said.
The Government is set to consider further tweaks to immigration settings tomorrow to assist businesses through the workforce shortage.
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