Wednesday, August 4, 2010

100% Wrong

A New Zealand Herald's opinion column by cloth capped whinging pom, Peter Bills titled: New Zealand - 100% Pure Rip-off claiming that Kiwis are price gouging visitors has caused some heated debate. 

With the exception of petrol, Bills claimed that local hotels, car hire, restaurant food, wine, clothes etc were massively overpriced. 

Cambell Live did an item this week comparing typical prices for visitors to Auckland, Sydney and London. We reckon they did a reasonable job, however the only item that was glaringly left off the comparative shopping list was accommodation.

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. 

Hopefully, the Campbell Live item has helped restore some reality to the debate by debunking the perceptions of a mean spirited columnist that used extreme one-off examples to try and prove a point.

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