Milford Sound waits for road re-opening 

Source: Downer EDIEast Portal of the Homer Tunnel buried under snow

Businesses and tourists will be crossing their fingers the Milford Sound road opens on Friday, to end more than a week of isolation for the Fiordland attraction.

State Highway 94, the road between Te Anau and Milford, was buried by avalanches and closed last Thursday. An eight-day closure will be one of the longest stretches of isolation in recent years.

John Robson, general manager of Southern Discoveries, which operates Redboats, a cafe and underwater observatory, says that while the road was closed businesses would still be incurring costs.

They would be keenly anticipating the road reopening as about 20,000 people visited each month during winter.

Robson was not aware of any tourists stuck in Milford Sound as avalanche warning equipment detected possible avalanches and tourists were advised to leave.

There were four major tourism businesses and during winter there would be about 70 people living there. One of the challenges was managing staff morale when people were forced to sit around for days at a time with nothing to do.

It was impossible to predict how many days the road would be closed each winter. One year the road was closed for a total of 23 days and another it closed for just four.

"It's a fact of life, an unfortunate cost of doing business in Milford."

"This is bad for business but I have to support the principle they have on this. There has never been a life lost on the road, of a tourist."

Robson says he was aware of a proposal to extend the tunnel portal to take it out of the avalanche area but it would be so expensive to build it was unlikely to happen soon.

The closure also affects businesses in Te Anau, 120km away.

The owner of two hospitality businesses there, Daniel Anderson, said the drop off in tourist numbers was noticeable if the road was closed.

Many tourists were on a tight travel timetable. "If their travel is disrupted then they go another route and not come this way at all."

Milford Sound has been nominated for a list of the New Seven Wonders of the World, putting it alongside the likes of the Grand Canyon in the United States, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon Rain Forest and Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro.

Having such an attraction cut off for extended periods of time was unavoidable for many natural features around the world, a spokeswoman for Tourism NZ said.

Many travellers expected it and in the middle of winter it was not unreasonable for access to be cut off, she said.

New Zealand Transport Agency Southland area manager Peter Robinson said it was hoped to reopen the road on Friday.

Explosives would be used to dislodge unstable snow from the most at-risk areas.