> It didn't seem to put a whole lot of people off: we had 3.7m tourist arrivals in 2017, without supersonic jets. Our population is only 5m.
I think you might underestimate how many people would visit if the long-haul flights weren't an obstacle. Pre-covid Iceland, easily reachable from Europe and the NE US, had over 1M arrivals on a population of only 300k: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Iceland
Iceland is a little bit more "on the way" than NZ is - it can be a stopping point on a trip to Europe or the US.
But I think you must be right. If the trip becomes less burdensome more people will want to come. The obvious (to me) response is to set a target tourist number, and raise the arrival fee until we get approximately that number of tourists. But now we're getting into policy :)
I think you might underestimate how many people would visit if the long-haul flights weren't an obstacle. Pre-covid Iceland, easily reachable from Europe and the NE US, had over 1M arrivals on a population of only 300k: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Iceland