Travellers and travel agents are maddened by an MIQ room allocation system that can make getting a room at the inn a nigh impossible task
Changes to MIQ and a complicated room allocation system have made locking down a spot quarantine easier said than done - despite reports from MBIE showing more than 1000 unallocated rooms as of last week.
A high demand for rooms, ongoing maintenance to the facilities and new cohorting procedures have put pressure on the MIQ system.
Travellers trying to come to New Zealand in the next few months are met with a calendar of crossed out and unavailable days.
Travel agent Lianne Powell has been trying to find space for a family coming from South Africa next month, but has turned up nothing after days of constant refreshing on the room allocation page - despite the numbers from MBIE indicating hundreds of available rooms.
If days do become available they are snapped up straight away, and Powell said the only availabilities tend to be for days when there are no big flights coming in.
“The frustration is huge,” she said.
As a travel agent, she is used to dealing with booking systems for flights and accommodation, but she said the MIQ website is the least user-friendly she has dealt with.
“I find their system very difficult,” she said. “It’s gone backwards. They don’t give a lot of information and it’s very hard to actually speak with somebody.”
It’s just another ball to juggle for migrants trying to start their lives in New Zealand. Powell’s clients have sold their homes and have jobs waiting in Auckland, and issues with the booking procedure are complicating their lives even further.
“They need to give people who are desperate the chance to speak to someone,” said Powell.
Part of the reason for the tide of unavailability on the booking website are vouchers for MIQ rooms only being released gradually in batches.
Joint head of MIQ Brigadier Rose King said this was to assist people in different time zones and ease traffic to the website.
“There are still more rooms to be released for August, September and October,” she said. “We advise people to keep checking the system for available dates.”
She said the capacity of the MIQ system has been down around 900 rooms recently, from 4000 available per fortnight to 3100.
“We have been operating at a lower capacity due to ongoing planned maintenance work, implementation of cohorting and both the Grand Mercure and Grand Millennium having been offline.”
With the Grand Mercure and Grand Millennium reopening soon after work on their ventilation systems, another 550 rooms could potentially be used.
However, this may not reflect the actual numbers available for travellers and returnees.
“The actual number which will be used will depend on incoming flights and the specific cohorting arrangements for these facilities,” said King.
According to MBIE, the cohorting procedures will "ensure returnees will be in the same facility as others who have arrived at about the same time, and importantly, keep those who have just arrived apart from those who are coming to the end of their stay."
But travel agents seeking to book rooms for clients on the site have complained the opaque system does not clearly explain why there are no rooms available, or when they can expect to book them - often a time-sensitive issue when handling the logistics of air travel in a post-Covid world.
King said there are better ways to communicate more effectively with the public.
“We are looking at how to demonstrate these fluctuations in capacity in our public reporting to ensure a more accurate understanding of MIQ capacity,” she said.
Powell said there should be more transparency. “They should update the website more often, telling people when rooms are going to become available to book,” she said. “They aren’t giving people the proper information.”
She was told by MBIE to apply for an emergency allocation, but was later told she needed to wait two weeks before her clients’ departure. “They don’t look at the reasons why it’s an emergency and why it might be time-sensitive,” she said. “They only look inside the box.”
Neither is this the last time unpredictability can be expected around the availability of rooms.
“We have an ongoing maintenance and ventilation programme which will continue to see facilities shifting in and out of our available capacity.”
