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great season underway - and can't get to it!

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I'm so sorry to hear this :( :( I just caught up on the news and found out, I thought of you straight away. I know a few people who will be mightily annoyed at this and/or seriously gutted.

Queenstown will be hurting, I wonder if NZski will have to let some seasonal staff go or if NZ tourism will be enough?
You've been so supportive since the beginning, thank you

Looking on the small amount of lessons being taken up on the NZski website, there's a lot of instructors who are going to be very under-utilised. Saying that, looking on the webcams (masochistic me!) there are an OK number of people on the slopes at the moment - more than I would have thought being outside of school holidays.
 

Jilly

Moderator
Staff member
I suspect that things down-under are similar to what we experienced up here. Mom and/or Dad are able to work from. School is remote, so...why not do everything from the ski hill/field. Especially if you own a place and short term rentals are banned.

Ontario closed the resorts. Quebec left them open, no snow school. Quebec also had a curfew of 8pm till 5:30 am. Big fines if caught with no legit excuse.
 

fgor

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Ah, remote work has been dead here for a long time sadly! Most people got dragged back into the offices a year ago and haven't left. Same for kids in school. In New Zealand, anyway. I'm guessing a lot of people in Aus are remote again.

People without kids might be using their annual leave on ski holidays I suppose? Especially with the Aus bubble closed a lot, quite a lot of people who would normally go overseas will be accruing decent annual leave balances. That's my best guess anyway!

@Eera really hope NZ can welcome you for the 2022 ski season :love:
 

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Have we got a glimmer of hope..?

Interesting news from Qantas saying that they are hoping to be flying to the US and Japan again from mid-December on the grounds that we should have the 80% vaccination rate that ScoMo says will let us start reopening international borders.

Taking it with a huge grain of salt as frankly Qantas has been saying this sort of thing roughly every three months for the last year and they don't actually get to decide when border will be open. Even so, went straight onto Skyscanner and flights for my Hokkaido booking dates are super-cheap!.

Going to start dreaming again... And checking news feeds / Skyscanner on a daily basis!
 

fgor

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Have we got a glimmer of hope..?

Interesting news from Qantas saying that they are hoping to be flying to the US and Japan again from mid-December on the grounds that we should have the 80% vaccination rate that ScoMo says will let us start reopening international borders.

Taking it with a huge grain of salt as frankly Qantas has been saying this sort of thing roughly every three months for the last year and they don't actually get to decide when border will be open. Even so, went straight onto Skyscanner and flights for my Hokkaido booking dates are super-cheap!.

Going to start dreaming again... And checking news feeds / Skyscanner on a daily basis!
Ahh, good luck!!!! I'm thinking about trying to maybe aim for an early 2023 Japan trip, would be awesome.
 

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Yea
Ahh, good luck!!!! I'm thinking about trying to maybe aim for an early 2023 Japan trip, would be awesome.
Yeah. Based on past performance I don't think it's too likely that it's actually going to happen. But I'm still going to keep dreaming that it will!
 

Skidreamer

Certified Ski Diva
I'm still too nervous to consider overseas holidays to be honest! I do feel (my unprofessional opinion) that Covid will continue to mutate into future different variants and I wonder if we will get to a point that the current vaccines don't work against these. Would we be able to create newly updated vaccines in time to counter this, if it happens? Who knows. I just really hope I'm allowed to see my mum this Christmas, or preferably before, that would be the first milestone for me. She's only 200kms away but it feels like a world away atm.

I really hope you get to do that Hokkaido trip, Eera :smile:

While Qantas don't make the decisions, we all know Alan Joyce would run the country and make all the decisions if we let him! ;-P
 

marzNC

Angel Diva
@Skidreamer : once you make a few more posts, you'll be able to see all the Divas Only sections. We have a thread that is about the pandemic. I've been following news for Australia and New Zealand pretty closely via the Australian ski forum. There is a growing body of evidence that current vaccines are effective for more than just the original variant.

By the way, we don't discuss politics here.
 

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I'm still too nervous to consider overseas holidays to be honest! I do feel (my unprofessional opinion) that Covid will continue to mutate into future different variants and I wonder if we will get to a point that the current vaccines don't work against these. Would we be able to create newly updated vaccines in time to counter this, if it happens? Who knows. I just really hope I'm allowed to see my mum this Christmas, or preferably before, that would be the first milestone for me. She's only 200kms away but it feels like a world away atm.

I really hope you get to do that Hokkaido trip, Eera :smile:
Looking at the daily case numbers in Japan I doubt they'll be opening up anytime soon; I spoke to the resort and they said their winter plans are on hold until their government makes a decision about when the country would be opening up to tourists. Annoyingly Sydney-Sapporo is super cheap, like $3800 for four of us with ANA right now: normally I'd be jumping on a price like that but I don't know whether I can even get to NSW, let alone Japan!

Yeah it's crap not seeing relatives hey. Haven't seen my parents for 2 years now. We have plans for New Years but they are just north of Sydney and we just have to play that one by ear.
 

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Hopefully there is starting to be a possibility for Australians to think about flying for the northern hemisphere ski season in 2022.
Yeah, it's based on an old promise the government made to open up the country when we got to 80% vaccination, which should be before that time based on current rates. Trouble is that the states are kind of going "nah" now and there really isn't any clear direction about who, what and where. Qantas has become notorious for putting flights on sale based on their own opinions about what's going to happen.

Don't get me wrong, I'm positively frothing at the mouth right now - I'm even in the process of renewing my passport just in case, as it lapses in April so I currently don't have the 6 months' worth I'd need for Japan should it come off.

I might go sacrifice some ice cubes to the snow gods. Every little helps!
 

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Well, put a deposit on Japan for January 2023 today. Not hopeful that either Japan's or Queensland's borders are going to be open in time for our present booking in 2022 (and flight prices were sitting at $14,000 for four of us as of today :eek: so that ain't happening).

Also have flights and vacation to Remarkables held over from August directly transferable to next year, so here's looking at the next twelve months being a lot colder and powerdery than the previous!

Incidentally my company got bought out by a mob from Edmonton, and there's an easy 12-month professional skills visa that I could get to Canada. Implanting the thought of doing a year in Alberta into Husband's head right now...
 

fgor

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Well, put a deposit on Japan for January 2023 today. Not hopeful that either Japan's or Queensland's borders are going to be open in time for our present booking in 2022 (and flight prices were sitting at $14,000 for four of us as of today :eek: so that ain't happening).

Also have flights and vacation to Remarkables held over from August directly transferable to next year, so here's looking at the next twelve months being a lot colder and powerdery than the previous!

Incidentally my company got bought out by a mob from Edmonton, and there's an easy 12-month professional skills visa that I could get to Canada. Implanting the thought of doing a year in Alberta into Husband's head right now...
Exciting!! I've been thinking for a while that I'd like to do Japan early 2023. I assume NZ will be a lot more open by then, but it'll depend on a few non-covidy things as well, so I can't lock anything in this early.

Hope you make it across to Remarkables!! I've just bought my 2022 3 Peaks season pass, so I'll definitely be hitting up Remarks a couple times next year as well. Looks like covid is here to stay in NZ so those in charge are looking at dismantling MIQ and slowly opening the NZ borders, so we should be seeing a lot more aussies on our slopes next winter. Fingers crossed for you :smile:

A year in Canada would be hella cool. My company recently got bought out as well, but by an Israeli company - not useful for skiing at all :laughter:
 

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Exciting!! I've been thinking for a while that I'd like to do Japan early 2023. I assume NZ will be a lot more open by then, but it'll depend on a few non-covidy things as well, so I can't lock anything in this early.

Hope you make it across to Remarkables!! I've just bought my 2022 3 Peaks season pass, so I'll definitely be hitting up Remarks a couple times next year as well. Looks like covid is here to stay in NZ so those in charge are looking at dismantling MIQ and slowly opening the NZ borders, so we should be seeing a lot more aussies on our slopes next winter. Fingers crossed for you :smile:

A year in Canada would be hella cool. My company recently got bought out as well, but by an Israeli company - not useful for skiing at all :laughter:
I believe they have slopes in Lebanon - when I was there they allowed border crossings (albeit in 2000!) so where there's a will etc... Husband is being a bit reluctant on the grounds he's a diesel fitter and would have to work outside. I've told him that it's not -45c *that* much and I'm sure they have gloves and fetching furry hats he can wear.

Man, I hope NZ is open by then: they're letting outward travel no quarantine right now but not the other way. Here's to an awesome 2022/23! :yahoo:
 

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Spoke to Club Med yesterday as their website is showing that Sahoro isn't open when we have our booking. They told me that they aren't opening this season but are willing to transfer my booking over to the rather more upmarket, adjacent (and $$$) Tomamu and match the price. So *if* we manage to get there (and there's effectively three weeks for our sh!tshow of border openings to get sorted), we'd get a massive upgrade for the price that we've had on hold from 2 years ago.

Really can't fault their customer service!
 

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Argh! we are so close! They've just announced that the *one way* travel bubble with Japan is resuming on Wednesday after being delayed 2 weeks while they got scared of Omicron. In early January we'll have our 90% vaccination rate which means no international quarantine. We. Just. Need. Japan. To. Open. Borders!!!!!

In other news, Remarkables is locked and loaded; travel company and Virgin Australia honoured all our various travel credits so August is currently a goer. They even chucked in a free trip on the TSS Earnslaw steamship, which was nice.
 

Eera

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
So just made the call to cancel our January trip; there's a new prime minister in Japan who has a hard-line approach to border closure, there's zero chance that they'll announce a border opening any time soon and we had to pay for the trip tomorrow.

Club Med have transferred our booking again, and thrown in a 10% discount on top, so very happy with their customer service, but bitterly disappointed overall.

Bring on NZ in August!
 

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