Ski New Zealand Travel Bubble Starts April 19
Ski New Zealand is back with the Travel Bubble start date announced for 11:59PM 18 April – effectively 19 April as predicted.
As she promised a couple of weeks back, NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the much anticipated start date for the Trans Tasman Travel Bubble today.
They have a framework based on continue, pause or suspend according to possible scenarios affecting each Australian states.
We told you then Air New Zealand appeared to be betting – and planning – on an April 19 Travel Bubble launch date, with services ramping up from 4 return Sydney – Auckland flights a week currently to 23 from April 19.
Direct flights to Queenstown are the #1 option for Aussies hopping the ditch to ski or board though, and those are set to return from April 20 with Air New Zealand.
Air New Zealand has some good deals in their system already further into winter, like $AUD 703 return Sydney – Queenstown direct. You can pay $25 to hold flights for 3 days, so you don’t even have to wait till this afternoon’s announcement to look for your preferred dates.
The airlines will hit the ground running, or the skies flying, with trans-Tasman deals and plenty of capacity ready to go.
Qantas announced on March 26 they will launch a Classic Rewards ‘points frenzy’ with 72 hours of deals and thousands of Qantas and Jetstar seats available to co-incide with the Travel Bubble launch date. They will also ramp up capacity.
Peak winter deals are dissapearing fast already though – we found some FF Classic Reward flights Sydney – Queenstown for August, but not many dates, while still more early September.
There are plenty of accommodation deals to be found to go with your flights – check booking.com for hundreds of them.
Booking.comOverall it’s great news all round. Queenstown, Wanaka, Methven-Mt Hutt, the club fields, and NZ’s biggest ski mountain, Mt Ruapehu’s twins Turoa and Whakapapa are all back on the menu.