The letters from Prim Minister John Key on long haul travel taxes have been ignored for a whole year by his British counterpart Gordon Brown. However, it now seems that the tourism industry is gearing up to join the fight as well.

The taxes that are imposed by the British government on outbound passenger flights are a major threat to New Zealand’s tourism trade. The industry is joining forces with Australia to fight any spread of this harsh practice.

Time Corssar, the Tourism Industry Association chief executive, said that 2010 was going to be a battle much like David and Goliath over air taxes. New Zealand would be only one of the losers if the spread of long haul travel taxes in Europe continues.

These new taxes add about $240 to the cost of a ticket for this year. At first these new taxes were treated as a direct attempt to mitigate carbon emissions. However, John Key says that this is all a bunch of rubbish.

Mr Key said that even Britain has now admitted that this is a revenue collecting device, not one admitted at climate change. It would be a ridiculous tax to impose, given there are a number of ways to deal with this issue. Air New Zealand chief executive, Rob Fyfe, said that this new tax is nothing more than a money grab.

There has been quite a bit of dialogue exchanged between the two ministers since the changes were announced back in 2008. However, this dialogue did very little to nothing at all in stopping these changes from taking place.