destination · Queenstown

Queenstown Is Worth Seeing And Expensive To Do: NZ$199 Jet Boats, NZ$320 Bungy, NZ$100 Levy

Queenstown occupies a shelf of land on the northeastern shore of Lake Wakatipu, hemmed in by The Remarkables to the southeast and Ben Lomond directly above the town centre. It is compact, roughly a fifteen minute walk end to end, with the town centre and Queenstown Bay at its heart, the residential and commercial sprawl of Frankton eight kilometres east near the airport, and Fernhill and Sunshine Bay strung west along the lake. Arrowtown, a preserved gold-rush settlement, sits about twenty kilometres northeast, the Gibbston Valley wine district lies through the Kawarau Gorge, and Glenorchy is at the head of the lake, a spectacular forty-five minute drive that is a genuine highlight and costs nothing. Arriving is now a taxed process. Most international visitors pay the International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy of NZ$100, charged at the same time as an NZeTA request or visa application, and the NZeTA itself starts at NZ$17 through the official Immigration New Zealand app and is valid for two years. Australian citizens, New Zealanders and some Pacific nationals are exempt from the levy. Both charges are non-refundable and neither guarantees entry. There is no local bed tax: Queenstown Lakes residents voted more than 80 percent in favour of a visitor levy in a non-binding 2019 referendum, but the legislation was never enacted and the proposal remains on hold. Queenstown Airport is one of the closest airports to a town centre in the country, and the Orbus public network makes the transfer trivially cheap. An adult airport fare is NZ$2.50 with a Bee Card or NZ$10 in cash, and standard adult fares elsewhere on the network are NZ$2.50 with a Bee Card or NZ$4 cash. The Bee Card costs NZ$5 with a NZ$5 minimum top-up, which breaks even against the NZ$10 cash airport fare on the first trip and saves on every trip after it, so buy one immediately. The headline activities are priced accordingly. The Skyline Gondola up Bob's Peak is NZ$69 for an adult and NZ$48 for a child, a gondola plus three luge rides package is NZ$99 adult, and gondola with unlimited luge is NZ$140. Shotover Jet, the jet boat operation in the Shotover River canyons, is NZ$199 adult, NZ$109 for children aged five to fifteen and NZ$507 for a family pass. AJ Hackett's Kawarau Bridge Bungy, the original commercial bungy site, starts at NZ$320 for an adult and NZ$280 for a child, with photos, video and a T-shirt included when booked direct. Combination packages escalate quickly, with the bungy, swing and zipline trio at NZ$495 and a Kawarau plus Nevis bungy combo at NZ$615. A RealNZ coach and cruise day trip to Milford Sound starts at NZ$292, involves five hours of coach travel each way plus a cruise of up to two hours, and departs between 6.45am and 7.35am. Seasons are sharply defined. The southern winter, roughly mid-June to early October, is ski season at Coronet Peak and The Remarkables and the town's busiest, most expensive period. December to February brings warm, long days, hiking on the Ben Lomond and Queenstown Hill tracks, and heavy domestic and international crowds. April to May and October to November are the shoulder seasons with the best price-to-crowd ratio. Whatever the month, expect traffic: Frankton Road exceeded ten million vehicle trips in 2025, and a NZ$250 million upgrade of the State Highway 6 and 6A Frankton intersection began in April 2024 and runs for around four years.