Life after 5pm

Opinion;

Pip Thompson – General Manager Napier City Business Inc

Life After 5 pm: Hawke’s Bay Needs to Wake Up!

To stay alive in 2025, trading hours can no longer be confined to 9 am to 5 pm.

Retail, business, hospitality, and tourist attractions need to rethink their opening hours if they want to remain viable in the future. Summer brings longer daylight hours, yet most tourist attractions shut their doors at 5 pm. Fancy a leisurely evening of shopping in the CBD? Keep dreaming.

Strolling through the main streets of both Hastings and Napier after 5 pm, all but a couple of retail stores have locked up and gone home. The town quickly turns into a ghost town, with limited options for locals and visitors alike.

Why don’t Hawke’s Bay business owners capitalise on the influx of visitors and holidaymakers by extending their hours in the summer and taking their breaks in the quieter winter months? A modest extension to 8:30 pm during the longer daylight hours could transform the region’s evening vibrancy.

Some argue that the population isn’t large enough to justify staying open later. But let’s challenge that assumption. Business owners are already paying rent on their premises whether they are open or not. Why not experiment with later hours using minimal staffing and see what happens?

Currently, most CBD retail shops operate from 9 am to 5 pm—precisely when the majority of people are working. Could this be a key reason why big-box stores, which open later, perform so well? Is this why online shopping has become such a dominant force?

Hawke’s Bay lacks a unique point of difference in its retail and tourism offerings. If businesses continue to operate with a status quo mindset, they may struggle to survive in the next 25 years. It’s time for a shift—let’s rethink our approach and make the most of our long summer evenings.

Hawke’s Bay has so much potential, but we need to be bold enough to unlock it.

Art Deco Festival weekend is a true example of streets coming alive day and night. This comes at great expense for a region to fund and only happens once a year. We know business tills are ringing on weekends like this and yet they invest very little into the festival itself. It’s time for businesses to embrace and support activations and invest in their own little activations, festivals and parties, encouraging more vibrancy in their own business. It’s not just the responsibility of local authorities to fund events. They don’t have the money to do this, nor should they. To make money, you need to take the risk and spend a bit on proactive planning. You will gain support from your community should you be offering a point of difference.

Hawke’s Bay has all the ingredients to be a thriving, vibrant destination well beyond 5 pm, but it takes vision and action from businesses to make it happen. And Im not saying staff work 12-hour shifts! Let’s support the workforce by allowing more people to enter the retail world after 5 pm!  The opportunity is there—who will be bold enough to seize it?