I have recently used the NZ traveller declaration online for the first time for myself and kids – what a hassle.

I know with the old paper forms it was the same in the fact that you had to fill out one per passenger (including children) but I coudnt help but see one easy improvement which would make it much more simple in my view, but perhaps there is a reason this is not the case.

I was really frustrated with the time it took to fill one out, not just for myself, but because I had to start a brand new declaration for each of my children I was traveling with also, the really frustrating was duplicating 90% of the information. For example, we all had the same flight details, departure dates, travel history, residing in NZ status, intention to stay in NZ – the list goes on. The only differences between declarations was the obvious things like birthdays and names.

I couldn’t help but compare it to other government online forms/submissions such as IRD, where you can fill out one form and add people to it as necessary, and when you add people it asks for their personal details. For example family boost payments, you can select add child as many times as you want and fill out the details only relating to them such as birthday etc.

I got thinking why can’t the NZ traveller declaration have some sort of family or group travel function where you can fill out one form for multiple people and fields that would be the same for each person would count for the group, like travel date, flight numbers (and the others mentioned above), and then have a field for “add passengers” where personal details would be filled out such as name and passport number etc.

It was just something that really bugged me and I was curious on others peoples thoughts, nothing worse than taking time out of your holiday to get frustrated with government bureaucracy!