9th February 2024 MRTEs / TDLG / TIA
Stats NZ disestablishes its Data Ventures arm, taking out a vital piece of regional insight for the country’s tourism sector.
Tourism and Hospitality Minister Matt Doocey says he shares the tourism sector’s disappointment over the suspension of the Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates.
Domestic visitor spend in Queenstown fell sharply in September 2023, contributing to an overall drop in tourism expenditure across the country compared with the same month last year.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is seeking industry input into what appears to be a significant change in the way visitor spend is measured.
The Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates have been suspended because of the impact Covid-19 has had on the dataset’s methodology.
Despite the challenges, Northland saw visitor spend for the month jump 30% to $84m.
Auckland’s second coronavirus lockdown dealt a further blow to the gateway city’s tourism economy already suffering from a lack of international visitors, with a 61% drop in tourist takings recorded in August.
New Zealanders hitting the road in the July school holidays delivered a huge spending boost for many smaller regions across the country, while key destinations including Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown continued to suffer from a lack of international spend.
A shift to alert level 1 in June was not enough to offset a lack of international dollars being spent in many regions across the country, according to the latest Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates.
The Destination Wairarapa area saw strong growth in visitor spending despite a damp Toast Martinborough.
Tourism Bay of Plenty led month-on-month visitor spending growth for regional tourism organisations in June 2019, increasing 13% on the same month last year to reach $77m, according to the latest Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates.
Monthly tourism spend growth has slowed across the country with the top ranking Regional Tourism Organisation delivering 18% growth in May, down from a top figure of 26% last month, and more RTO’s delivering no or negative growth.
The two RTO areas saw strong visitor spend for the month of April, according to MBIE’s latest data.
More than a third of RTOs across NZ showed flat visitor spending growth or worse in January.
Wellington has seen visitor spending figures for October drop after a revision was undertaken by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
The country’s newest regional tourism organisation, Aoraki Tourism, topped visitor spending growth for October 2018 compared to the same month last year, excluding Destination Kaikoura’s recovery-skewed returned.
Destination Kaikoura continued to top spending growth for regional tourism organisations across the country with August 2018 expenditure up 52% to $4m compared to the same month last year.
The region continued to lead visitor spending with yearly growth to July up 17% to $160m.
Tourism spending grew in all regions over the past year to February 2018 with Canterbury and the West Coast regions showing the largest increases with monthly returns boosted by Chinese New Year.
Gisborne and Marlborough showed the strongest month-on-month spending growth in January lifting 15% to $21m and 13% to $60m respectively