Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis. Photo: RNZ / Reece Baker
While Tasman's mayor is hopeful visa changes to allow 'digital nomads' to work for foreign companies while in New Zealand will smooth out the high and lows of the tourism season, a Barcelona-based writer warns of over-tourism after a similar visa was introduced in Spain two years ago.
On Monday, Economic Growth Minister Nicola Willis unveiled changes to visitor visas, allowing remote work for foreign companies while in New Zealand.
The so-called 'digital nomads' include visitors such as IT specialists, as long as they are not receiving any income from New Zealand sources. It would also extend to influencers, provided they were being paid by overseas companies.
These changes would apply to all visitor visas, including tourists and people visiting family, and take effect immediately.
Photo: Supplied/AFP
Visitor visas can be extended for up to nine months, although the ministers warned working in New Zealand for more than 90 days could require them to declare themselves as a New Zealand tax resident.
Speaking to Morning Report on Tuesday, Tasman District Council mayor Tim King said it was hard to see the downside.
"For a region like us we've got a very peaky tourism season so flat out busy over kind of December, January, February, but the shoulder seasons, the balance of the year, much less so.
Tasman District Council mayor Tim King. Photo: RNZ / Tracy Neal
The area already had the infrastructure and it would be good to make the most of it all year round, King said.
However, Barcelona-based writer Marta Bausells also told Morning Report that Spain has been plagued by over-tourism after a similar visa was introduced in 2023.
"Barcelona was already struggling with the effects of mass tourism, so it was already kind of overcrowded in that sense.
"But then since the pandemic, digital nomads have cropped up everywhere seemingly."
Bausells said rents had increased by 60 percent in the last five years.
"People are being pushed out of the city.
"It's a quick and extreme case of gentrification because digital nomads get paid salaries from their much wealthier European countries, or the US, or other places, but they get much higher salaries than locals."
An activist in the Plaza de San Jaime, in the historic center, shows a sign with the phrase ''Tourists go home'' in Barcelona, Spain. Photo: AFP / JORGE MANTILLA
It has been a tense issue in Spain, and Bausells believed Spain had the highest ratio of tourists in the world, with 20 per resident.
"A lot of these tourists live here, and it is quite visibly different to immigration, which I think the city has been very, very open to always. But this is a form of quote-unquote immigration that doesn't seem to have any interest in where they are or the culture or the languages. They just seem to kind of see it as a place that caters to their lifestyle."
