Matterhorn South Lodge and Backpackers

May 2nd, 2021

The room was pretty good, a bit squished for 4 adults and the shared kitchen is a bit old and under stocked. My main issue was with a seemingly helpful staff member, an older Pkeh gentleman. He was giving good advice for things in the town and on the way to our next location until he started telling us about the Franz Josef hot pools. He advised us that Mori received $900 million, but decided to close the pools, fire all their staff and keep the money for themselves. I replied and said I'm sure they have closed for a reason and he implied that they were simply selfish. I was in shock that somebody would say something so misinformed, and my only guess as to how he came to that conclusion, must be that he saw two separate headlines and without caring to read the full stories, connected them together. I myself wasn't sure about either story so was unable to bring it up at the time and couldn't find him later once I had looked it up. I would implore him to look up the budget for the year and see that the $900 million allocated to Mori, is to be split over education, housing, khanga reo, language & culture, whnau support and businesses. The Franz Josef Springs is owned by Ngi Tahu Tourism, this is a business, under the iwi group, that did not directly receive funds from this budget allowance. They announced early May that because of covid 19, they have projected they will write off their last 5 years of profits and cannot afford to keep their staff from June/July and have put the majority of their businesses on pause. They are not the only business that has to make devastating cuts. The blame in which your staff member has placed on all Mori is extremely disappointing and hurtful to myself, to all Mori and all of the customers he has passed this misinformed generalisation on to. I hope that he can take this opportunity to do a bit of research into what he is telling the tourists of our beautiful country, not just rely on attention grabbing headlines and question why he was so happy to cast a negative opinion on our native people without all the facts.
Jan 19th, 2021

Dec 23rd, 2020

Dec 18th, 2020

Nov 23rd, 2020