Hospitality and Tourism Minister Louise Upston, and Regulations Minister David Seymour at Astoria cafe in Wellington to announce review of regulations in the hospitality sector. Photo: RNZ / Russell Palmer
The government has announced the Regulations Ministry's next sector review will tackle the hospitality sector.
Regulations Minister David Seymour announced the review alongside Hospitality Minister Louise Upston.
It would cover regulations for restaurants, cafes, bars, food stalls at markets, food trucks, caterers, and hotels, but exclude gambling regulations.
Seymour said the industry was hit hard by Covid, and red tape had made it hard to bounce back.
"Every Kiwi has a café or bar they wish was still open. Inconsistent requirements cost owners valuable time and money. For example, some business owners might be required to get resource consents on top of alcohol licenses, so that customers can enjoy a cold beer in sun. In other areas of the country just an alcohol license is required."
It would also look at rules that kept hotel guests from taking a glass of wine they had bought at the bar from taking it back to their room.
"It just doesn't make sense. That same guest can purchase a bottle of wine from the supermarket to drink in their room."
He said food truck owners who wanted to service events also faced "disproportionate costs" from some local councils, with one paying more than $900 for a single event.
Upston said she was looking forward to "working to get hospitality back on the table".
"This review will improve hospitality rules so they're working as they should - cutting red tape, keeping costs down, managing risks, and making compliance easier."
Upston said a strong hospitality sector would also be important as tourism numbers grew.
"It is such a vital part of our towns and communities, they have had challenging times, but it's actually really exciting to see they're feeling more optimistic, and we are starting to see some green shoots of growth, which is fantastic.
"Tourists have a choice, so if we want people to come to New Zealand, we've got to make sure that the great businesses in the hospitality sector aren't held back by different restrictions than their competitors, who are actually in other countries as far as tourists go."
Seymour said more than 1500 complaints had come through the ministry's tipline, many of them about hospitality, with inconsistency and overzealous enforcement the main themes.
"We got people who say 'I got pinged for some minor technical issue', or 'I had the need to have three different exits from my bar, even though I had two exits that were actually vehicle width, I couldn't open because I didn't have three'. That kind of thing is really just quite crazy.
"Another good example would be I've got a hospitality business that's got a shared seating space - two of them have licenses to sell alcohol but if you've bought a drink from one, you can't then buy a drink from the other."
He said there were no estimates just yet about how much time or money the review might save, but the Regulations Ministry had estimated on average each review saved "tens of millions" when considering societal welfare net present value over 10 years.
"These are driven by the sector - it's up to them to come up with the problems - it would be hard to know what the savings might be until they've identified the problems."
The review was set to take six months.
The ministers encouraged people to submit complaints about regulations to the ministry.
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