UK ex-pat, Bills has endured living in New Zealand since 1975 and managed to get under the skin of most insecure, oversensitive Kiwis by critiquing a carefully selected shopping list of prices paid on his domestic travels.
Bills acknowledges that petrol is much cheaper than back 'ome, but claims that in just about every other field, hotels, car hire, restaurant food, wine, clothes or whatever, we are the victims of massive overcharging.
We are not completely sold! While reading his column, we can clearly hear the entrenched whining pommy accent of someone with a cloth-cap firmly in place.
It is amusing that Bills supposedly tries to book into an inner city 5-star hotel during a major sporting event and expects a bargain! It was pleasing however that he was able to appreciate value while staying at the the Boulevard Waters Motor Lodge overlooking Lake Taupo @ $158 a night.
As an indication of New Zealand's relative average hotel room rates on a world scale, a recent survey recently released by Hotels.com placed Auckland as one of the world's least expensive spots. Only Manila and Warsaw managed to have the dubious honour of achieving lower average tariff.
There could be a few gems of reality within the column inches, however Bills appears to fall victim to a common misconception of many travellers that compare prices or services between countries and struggle to grasp current realities, differences in exchange rates and compare apples with oranges.
From our experience, Bills's somewhat naive and biased observations are not typical from our overseas guests, particularly those visitors that are fortunate enough to start their holiday with a pocket full of sterling.
** UPDATE **
We see that it has been reported that: "Tourism leaders reject 'too dear' claim"
Hospitality Association boss, Bruce Robertson summed it up succinctly by saying:
"People are getting excited about one-off examples at the extreme end."Quite!
