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“We could lose at least 20-25 percent on a normal Bledisloe Cup weekend without missing the big Saturday night,” says Wellington hospitality owner Jordan Mills.
The Mills family owns nine restaurants, cafes and clubs in the city, and thanks to COVID-19 they have lost more than $ 1 million in revenue.
A big weekend of rugby usually fills the city on both nights.
“It’s tough with the hit we’ve had for the last six months, it’s really disappointing,” says Mills.
It’s not just the bars that are affected, many hotels are far from full.
“We have not had the increase in bookings that we expected for a game of this magnitude,” says Suresh Subramaniam, owner of U Hotel Group.
“There may be a lot of people coming and going.”
More than 30,000 people will walk through the gates on Sunday afternoon. It is the first time since 2012 that the All Blacks have failed to sell a Wellington game with 4,500 tickets still in play.
But even if this game does not sell out, it is still the busiest weekend in the capital since the first lockdown.
“It is very important to so many industries involved, important to the hotel industry when people go out, important to retailers as people do some shopping, important to tourist attractions,” says Anna Calver, general manager of Wellington NZ.
But for the Mills family, they expect the next big game to be a big Saturday night.
