Monthly Unique Regional Population Estimates
5 October 2023
MBIE
The Monthly Unique Regional Population Estimates have been paused after the release on 5 October 2023 for August 2023 data. The Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE) is undertaking a review process for this experiment data series.
More information about pausing MURPEs can be found here.
Please contact us at tr_sharedmailbox@mbie.govt.nz if you have any questions.
MBIE and Data Ventures have worked together to produce estimates for monthly unique local and visitor populations in each RTO in New Zealand. ‘Unique’ means each person will only be counted once in each area they appear, regardless of how many times they appear or how long they stay there.
The series begins in January 2019 and aims to fill a key gap that was identified by the tourism sector in understanding regional visitor volumes.
The populations that are estimated include:
- International visitors – people from outside New Zealand who are staying in the country for less than one year.
- Short-term international visitors – a subset of international visitors who are staying in the country for less than 90 days. (These people are counted as both ‘international’ and ‘short-term international’).
- Local residents – New Zealanders in their primary or secondary home region.
- Domestic visitors – New Zealanders outside their home region(s).
More information can be found on MBIE's website.
Update (6 Jul 2023): Since January 2023, we identified unusual trends and inconsistencies in the MURPE data. Our data provider investigated and identified two errors:
- cell towers were not mapped to RTOs, resulting in some visitors not being included in RTO estimates
- non-mobile devices with cellular capability were counted as mobile devices
The two problems have been resolved. Prior to the release of this data, quality checks, outlier identification, comparator analyses, and sense checking were completed. The entire MURPE data series has been fully quality-checked and updated until the end of May 2023.
The full error report is available here.