Those taxes, such as Hotel and Rental tax are applied to everyone, not just visitors and I'm not saying NZ is alone in this. But having just spent a month and half in the US, they did not differentiate between overseas visitors and locals as far as taxes went - in fact, tourists could get relief ...

Agree FreqFlyer - If I see dual pricing, I just wouldn't go. 

Slugging tourists does nothing to ease congestion - nothing at all and seems to be the default position of many governments. Most problems that were seen in Australia was to do with the Chinese tourist boom where hardly any money was coming back into the economy because of the Chinese vertical ow...

Other than the Chinese who tend to own the companies at which the Chinese tourists spend, other overseas tourists 'pay their way' by bringing much needed foreign money into the country through hotels, hire cars, meals and the like. I have just spent 4 weeks touring some US national parks where th...