Qantas and Virgin bet on New Zealand travel bubble

Qantas and Virgin have begun advertising flights from Australia to New Zealand beginning December this year. This is our strongest indicator yet of a trans-Tasman travel bubble and great news for the travel and tourism sector in both countries. The bubble will no doubt lead to increased spending and a much-needed boost to economic activity for both countries, with The Australian reporting up to 3.6 billion dollars in additional economic activity if a bubble were to be established.

What this means to frequent flyers?

As both Qantas and Virgin are opening flights to New Zealand, a trans-Tasman bubble will provide a much-needed option outside of Australia, and it sure beats a flight to nowhere. Prices are reasonable too! We were able to find return trips with Qantas for less than $700 or 107,500 Qantas Points. The cheapest Virgin Australia return flight we found was $802, however there may be better options out there depending on the dates you choose. Virgin hasn’t yet opened their Velocity store for international travel, however we anticipate they will over the coming weeks.

Get in quick!

The word must be getting out as Virgin’s first flights from Melbourne to New Zealand on the 14th of December have completely sold out and Qantas flights beginning Monday 7th December are surely not far behind.

Want to get there cheaper?

There are some great credit card bonus offers at the moment. These can bag you a large chunk of frequent flyer points on the cheap! To find out what our best picks are for the month, check out our review of the best Qantas frequent flyer credit cards.

This article will be updated with more detail in the coming days.