Photo: RNZ / Katie Todd
Gold Rush: Who's cashing in on Queenstown? An RNZ series examining the money flowing into Queenstown - and who's missing out.
Workers are arriving in Queenstown and leaving within weeks because the cost of living is too high, recruiters and unions say.
Despite record-high visitor spending and hundreds of job listings, data shows a growing gap between average pay rates and day-to-day living costs in the district.
CafΓ© worker Orla Marshall, from Scotland, was living in a van - the only way she had been able to return to Queenstown after finding it too costly last winter, she said.
She initially rented a room in a flat with her partner in Fernhill at a below-average $220 per week - but it came with "very expensive" heating, she said.
"A lot of our paychequ
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