Laura Douglas' tourism start-up, a farm surrounded by snow-tipped mountains in southern New Zealand, was attracting hundreds of mostly foreign visitors a month until the coronavirus pandemic brought it to a sudden halt in March.
"It's like I've been mourning the loss of my business," Douglas, 33, said in a phone interview with Reuters, adding she had to take on a second job as a vet to pay the bills during a strict lockdown that included sealing the country's borders.
The rebound for New Zealanders who are reliant on tourism is expected to be slow, in marked contrast to how the tourism sector is faring in Vietnam, another nation that was hailed as a success story in Asia for containing the coronavirus.