kick starting international

[BNEA320]

if airlines could advertise lower airfares then surely that would increase bums in seats.
One way of doing this, is to go back to old way of collecting international departure tax which I think is $60 per adult over 11 years (or whatever it's called now), at the airport on day of departure.

We have to get the leisure traveller flying again, especially from NZ to Australia to help our tourism industry, who can then pay taxes.

So for example if a SYD/AKL fare could be advertised for $140 instead of $200, that sounds a lot cheaper, especially for families, when the multiplier effect comes into play.

Sure the $60 would have to be paid at the airport, but, it's then not perceived as part of the airfare ($140 + $60 later seems cheaper than $200 now)

Looking at it another way, if airline maintained the $200 one way fare, they would end up with roughly $60 more revenue multiplied by millions of passengers (minus commissions/credit card fees), which would help the bottom line, keeping people employed.

Remember a quote from a Tiger OZ sales guy, saying Tiger found significantly different demand when fares varied by as little as a dollar or 2, although that could have been the difference between $99 & $100, which is much more than $1 in peoples heads.

So the govt would have to employ a few dozen people to collect the $60 or pay someone else to do it. Big deal. Talking pennies compared with hundreds of billions they are currently throwing around right now.