A bitter cold snap ripping through the lower South Island has brought plenty of snow to Queenstown, but it isn't quite the boost locals were hoping for.
With the quarantine-free travel bubble briefly paused between Australia and New Zealand, many travellers who would've flown here for the school holidays are now unable to.
Coronet Peak ski field is now a hive of activity with workers in full snow-making mode. They're hoping to open in a couple of days.
"Conditions are fantastic for snowmaking today," says NZSki CEO Paul Anderson. "We've had about six to twenty centimetres overnight of natural snow and we're in really cold conditions. So we're in about -3C at the moment which is great conditions for snowmaking."
But they're ramping up for a much smaller run than expected. The team had staffed up ahead of the Aussie school holidays due to begin on Monday - but that bubble has burst.
"The timing's shocking. It's Murphy's Law, isn't it. Just as it's the Aussie school holidays, a lot of those Aussies were about to come and we're doing mass rescheduling at the moment," Anderson says.
"We're trying to avoid cancellations but there's a lot of people that don't have the flexibility to reschedule so we will lose their business."
The impact is being felt throughout the region, with many businesses hoping to gain some ground on the losses from a terrible 18 months in tourism.
"The forward bookings for this coming weekend, which was the welcome to Winter Festival, were pretty close to pre-COVID levels, so to lose a big chunk of that - it's going to make a massive, massive difference," says Queenstown Chamber of Commerce CEO Ruth Stokes.
"Of course our businesses had geared up in the face of this expected demand, so they're carrying much higher operating costs."
Australians coming to enjoy a winter holiday in Queenstown represented 40 percent of all bookings, equating to tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue.
"I had texts from a hotelier this morning telling me that he's lost 65 percent of his bookings for one day this week, which represents $120,000 in revenue for just one day," says Queenstown Mayor Jim Boult.
But those who were lucky enough to get in before the borders shut, are enjoying being stranded in paradise.
"We've heard the news back in Sydney and it sounds terrible, so we're very lucky to be here," one says.
"Neither of us think we've been in snow like that before, so it's been really beautiful," another says.
And the snow is set to continue. There's more snow forecast overnight for the deep south and freezing temperatures on Tuesday morning.
