New Zealand the Place to Be in 2017

From the Himalayas to the Highlands and south to New Zealand, a panel of travel industry leaders have picked the hottest destinations for the coming year in a feature for the Financial Times.

While some travellers will always yearn for the new and exotic, a sobering trend of 2016 and 2017 has been the retreat to “safe haven” destinations, according to the FT.

“Basically anywhere travellers perceive there’s no risk from Isis-linked terrorism is doing well – so Latin America, the Himalayas, the Canaries,” Tim Greening of KE Adventure says.

New Zealand is perhaps the prime example, but it’s also benefiting from a wave of new accommodation combining luxury and remote wilderness locations as well as much-improved flight connections on American Airlines, United and Air New Zealand.

“Together they have essentially doubled the flight offerings from North America — we’re seeing New Zealand continue to boom,” president and CEO of travel company Butterfield & Robinson Norman Howe says.

Recent openings include Helena Bay (pictured), which launched in November, a collection of lavish two and three-bed villas overlooking the beach and surrounded by 800 acres of fields and forests, and Marlborough Lodge, a 10-bedroom boutique hotel in the heart of the Marlborough wine region. The British and Irish Lions rugby tour in June and July, and the World Masters Games in April, will also boost visitor numbers and generate overseas television coverage.

Original article by Financial Times, December 27, 2016.