After another year of Great Walk tech issues , the Department of Conservation has revealed almost half of the trampers hoping to nab a space on the Milford Track were calling in from overseas. There was great frustration again on Tuesday after 11,000 people logged onto the Great Walks booking website for 9.30am on opening day.
The weight of demand for a place on the network’s premier walk the Milford Track meant DoC was forced to reboot the system. “Due to the patchy experience we decided to reset the system, which would have looked like a crash to some people,” said Cat Wilson, director of heritage and visitors. Despite patchy performance and inability to place bookings during the first hour, the Milford Track was filled in 45 minutes after a reset at 10.
30am. There were around 7210 successful bookings for Milford, according to DoC’s booking team. This is slightly higher than last year, with more bookings by solo hikers and smaller groups.
While some walkers were rewarded for their patience, waiting almost an hour for the website to restart, DoC has hinted that time is running out for their IT supplier after repeat issues. “We are disappointed it wasn’t the smooth experience we were hoping for. “ We have lost patience with the vendor and will be having serious conversations about the future to avoid this happening again,” said Wilson.
A significant volume of traffic was from overseas, with international demand up 47 per cent on 2023. There were bookings place.
