No work, nowhere to stay and no way home: Irish backpacker stranded in New Zealand

As the new year’s bells rang in 2020 in New Zealand, everything was going great for Irish backpacker Luke Davis and his Canadian girlfriend Megan Wickens. But within weeks, the couple’s plans would be is tatters and they would be stranded in a country thousands of kilometres from home with no work, nowhere to stay and no way home.

Coronavirus, lockdown and social distancing were not on the couple’s radar back then and with decent jobs, a place to stay and pleasant summer months ahead, things were looking good.

It is all different today. Davis is in Lake Tekapo, one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist spots, which should be heaving with people.

“Right now it is a ghost town of unoccupied holiday homes and vacant gift shops,” he says. “We have been here for the past week.”

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The couple have been in New Zealand for six months. They had worked in hospitality for the first four months and had been travelling around both islands, living out of their car for the last two months.

“We were just coming to the end of our travels and already had job offers from two hotels to start in early April when things started to turn. In mid-March we came back from a four-day hike with no internet or phone service to messages from home that Covid-19 had hit, schools closed and ‘social distancing’ was first mentioned.”

At that point, New Zealand hadn’t yet felt the full impact of Covid-19 and “as backpackers, we certainly didn’t notice any difference to our day-to-day activities”.

Overnight things changed. One of their would-be employers sent an email to say that, as a result of measures aimed at slowing the spread of the virus in New Zealand, the job was gone.

“This was the first time we had been directly impacted by Covid-19 but it would not be the last,” Davis says. “We still had the other job offer so we were still content with staying in New Zealand as planned.”

Then that job offer disappeared too.

“Now we really had to scramble, as the industry we work in had all but closed at this stage. We were deciding between going home or finding work in a different industry. At the time, New Zealand only had about eight cases [of Covid-19] and it seemed like they were putting in the right measures to keep it that way. Our home countries’ numbers were rising by the day, so we decided to stay and look for work in the fruit industry. We found work easily but just as quickly as we found it, work was taken away as the country moved towards a total lockdown.”

The couple booked two nights in a hotel to regroup and decide on the best thing to do. Then they were told they could only stay for one night as the hotel was closing.

“This is when we started to feel trapped, as everything we had been doing on a day-to-day basis was now beginning to be outlawed. We called campsites, they were closed, we needed to drive to get to a place we could stay but only essential workers were entitled to be on the road.”

The couple decided they had no other option but to leave New Zealand. “We had no jobs, no accommodation and no reason to stay so we started looking at flights. Last-minute flights are always more expensive than usual, but at a time like this they were unbelievable. Flights within the next few days to Dublin averaged NZ$7,000 (€3,840) and to Toronto NZ$5,000 (€2,740). We managed to get a flight to Dublin for NZ$3,000 (€1,645) and one to Toronto for NZ$2,000, (€1,100) but we had to wait a week for them.”

The couple found a company in Tekapo, on New Zealand’s South Island, that opened its doors to people in their situation, giving accommodation to people who had no where to go, and they waited for the day they could leave.

“As each day went by, things changed rapidly, rules changed rapidly. One of these severely impacted our plans: No domestic flights for non-citizens.”

The flights the couple had bought included a domestic flight, so they weren’t able to take it. “So we thought about maybe driving to Auckland airport, but we are not allowed drive that far from the lockdown location and even if we could drive, Auckland [which is on the North Island] is a ferry ride away and only essential workers can take the ferry.”

Then they looked for flights directly out of Christchurch International Airport on the South Island, but there were none.

Wickens’ flights to Canada were directly with Air New Zealand, so she was able to get her money refunded when it became clear departure was not an option. Davis, on the other hand, had booked through an online travel agent.

“I have had a lot of trouble with them trying to get my money back. In fact, after being on hold for four hours, I was spoken to for one minute, then told I would be called back in a half hour.”

There was no call back. So he tried again. He was on hold for a further three hours and when he got through he was told the online operator could not reschedule his flight and he was directed to the agent’s website to request a refund.

Davis says he was offered the choice a pittance of $18 on a $2,800 flight or the option to pay the online operator an additional $37 and wait six months for a refund.

He spent days talking to the airlines involved, attempting to get his money refunded. They included Aer Lingus – who said they could not do anything for him as the flights were booked through a third party – and Air New Zealand, who offered him airline credit of $1,900 for one flight and $200 for another flight.

However, “the two vouchers can’t be combined and can only be used under my name, in the next 12 months, and only used on a flight that has to cost $1,900 or more (or $200 or more).”

So to use his voucher, the new airfare must cost in excess of $1,900. “I cannot get a flight that is less than $1,900 and just lose the difference,” he says, the value of the flight must be in excess of $1,900 for the voucher to be accepted.

“The flight prices at moment are $1,700 or $3,000, and I can’t increase the price of a flight by adding bags or picking seats, so I would have to go for the $3,000 flight.”

He says the online travel agent has told him that if he works with the airlines to get anything directly he will forfeit his rights to get any refund from the travel agent.

“There are no good options for me,” Davis says. “I am going to pay the agent more money for their ‘assisted refund’ option because if I go through them I should get cash back and not just a credit. From my conversations with Air New Zealand, the ticket is refundable to the agent and they say they will give me ‘the maximum refund” they can get from the airlines. So I’m taking that chance.”

As to what happens next, Davis says a friend of the couple took their car off them “and will try to sell it. He gave us money in advance to pay for a new flight for me and Mag was able to pay for hers with the money she got back from Air New Zealand. We have flights on the April 23rd. We currently have $85 in our bank account so the timing for us to leave couldn’t be better.”

The Irish Times has been in touch with Air New Zealand who are currently looking into the matter.