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Announcing changes to the MIQ booking system today, Hipkins said 4000 rooms a fortnight will be released each fortnight between now and Christmas.

About 3000 of those rooms will be released from Monday. Hipkins said anyone who enters the virtual 'lobby system' between 8am and 9am on Monday will have an equal chance of securing a room. He asked people know their preferred flight route and select the correct date of arrival to avoid wasting MIQ rooms. Monday's voucher release will not include red flights from Australia. Hipkins said a decision on the trans-Tasman bubble will be made next week. Hipkins said the new MIQ system was not a 'first in, first served' model. People will be randomly moved into a queue and when they get to the front they'll get to book a room. Hipkins said the lobby was designed so that bots could not access it. But on third parties, he said it was not something he encourages but sometimes there were legitimate reasons for why someone may need to use them. The local pressure on MIQ system had started to ease, Hipkins said. "It isn't a silver bullet and we are fully expecting there will be more demand for rooms than rooms available." He said pressure on MIQ will still be there until at least the end of this year.
More details about the 'lobby system' can be found on the official website here.
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Find our daily snapshot data below. We changed the format of these on 30 July 2021. The snapshot now includes the impacts of cohorting on capacity.

We have combined occupied rooms and rooms unoccupied due to cohorting, to create a total room allocation that more accurately reflects room availability.

For more information about common media topics, including vouchers, please visit the Media Centre.

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From November through to March, a host of sports teams arrive into the country:

• All Blacks (65 rooms)
• Black Ferns (65 rooms)
• Black Caps (77 rooms)
• Bangladesh cricket team (35 rooms)
• Women's Cricket World Cup (181 rooms)
• Silver Ferns (24 rooms)
• South Africa cricket team (35 rooms)
• Winter Olympics returnees (53 rooms)
• Netherlands cricket team (35 rooms)
• Winter Paralympians (11 rooms)

Only around half of the available rooms in the MIQ system are actually used by regular New Zealanders booking through the Managed Isolation Allocation System (MIAS).

When all MIQ facilities are available, there are 4900 rooms available per fortnight, but a total of 2400-2550 are not used by MIAS bookings:

• 350-500 are set aside for large groups and special allocations
• 350 for emergency allocations
• 900 rooms set aside for contingency
• 15 percent or 600-odd lost to cohorting
• 4-7 percent or 200-odd lost due to no shows

Occasionally hotels are unavailable due to maintenance or ventilation issues.

Message last updated: 10:32
There are no more November or December rooms left. There will be another room release soon with more November and December rooms. If you intend to travel in November or December and do not want a date for any other month, please leave the queue. There are still rooms for September, October available.

If you are successful in entering the site today, once you secure your date, please log out and leave the site. You can return later today or tomorrow to add your flight details. This will allow the queue to flow freely and enable more people to enter the site to book rooms.

Message last updated: 10:57
Only rooms in September remain. There will be another room release soon with more October, November and December rooms. If you intend to travel in Oct, Nov or Dec and do not want a date for any other month, please leave the queue

Message last updated: 11:14
Only rooms for the next week remain, 21st to 26th Sept. If you can arrive on these dates please stay in the queue. There will be another room release soon with more October, November and December rooms.

Message last updated: 11:32
The room release has now concluded. Thanks for your patience. There will be another room release soon with more October, November and December rooms.

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Regan Collins stayed up late in London to get in the online queue. He was positioned 12,500 in the queue after logging into the system at 8.01am. "It does feel like some sort of cruel game to enter a lottery for a flight back home, surely there should be some form of priority to those with special circumstances such as critically ill loved ones," Collins told the Herald. "I have had two vaccines which in the UK lessens my level of quarantine time when travelling back into the UK. New Zealand must look at some alternatives to a 14-day hotel quarantine otherwise what is the long-term strategy?

Wellington telco engineer Jonathan Brewer, who has been stuck in Singapore for months trying to book an MIQ room, told the Herald: "This system is designed for selling concert tickets, not for helping people get home. I don't think anyone involved in this project is going to be putting it on their CV. I know I wouldn't."
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There has been disappointment and frustration for the 22,000 New Zealanders trying to get home through the MIQ system who missed out on places this morning.

At least 25,000 people were vying for a place using a new 'virtual lobby system'. Just 3000 of them, who were randomly given a spot at the front of the queue, were able to get a booking for rooms from September through to December.
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Up to 7000 vouchers for managed isolation spots are to be released before the end of the year, MIQ deputy chief executive Megan Main says.

There were 3200 rooms released this morning under the new system which randomly allocates each person a position in the queue. For the more than 22,000 who did not get a spot, they can have another shot in a couple of weeks' time. She said overall the booking system went smoothly today. "We had 5300 people from 117 countries who were able to get vouchers in those 3200 rooms that we released and I know it was good for those people but I know there were thousands of people who missed out in today's release."

Main said they were planning to release another few thousand vouchers early next week. She said mid-week they will be looking to see if any of today's vouchers had not been confirmed and whether they can be re-released. There were 25,000 people in the new online lobby just before 9am today, Main said. After 9am there were 31,800, she said. Those new entries after 9am went to the back of queue, she said.
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