The Tourism Recovery Dashboard tracks the border reopening and its effect on the recovery of the tourism sector from the COVID-19 pandemic. This is updated weekly with StatsNZ provisional border crossing and visitor arrival data, Sabre flight capacity, Marketview international electronic card spend, and Immigration New Zealand visa approval and arrival figures for the Working Holiday Scheme visa.

Border crossing data measures all crossings in and out of New Zealand every day. These data do not incorporate arrival card information so no breakdown of traveller type (e.g. overseas visitor, New Zealand resident) is available. Border arrivals by country show the country of the last overseas port where the passenger boarded before arriving in New Zealand, not their country of usual residence or nationality. Arrivals from the Pacific Islands are largely attributed to critical and essential workers rather than tourists.

International arrival data measures the arrivals of short-term overseas visitors arriving from major international tourism markets, as well as outbound NZ residents returning to NZ. These data come from arrival cards filled out by everyone that crosses the border, which allows us to break down figures by purpose of travel and length of stay.

International flight capacity data has been removed.

International electronic card spend indicates change in spend patterns in the economy, and in particular, cards from overseas financial institutions that transact on the Worldline (formerly Paymark) network. Transactions outside the Worldline network (e.g. cash, online spend) are not included. See the Consumer Spend Dashboard to better understand the limitations of this dataset.

Working Holiday Scheme (WHS) visa data from Immigration New Zealand tracks the number of approvals of those that applied for a WHS visa, and how many WHS visa holders first arrive in New Zealand each month. WHS Special Direction approvals were granted automatically for WHS visa holders who were offshore when their visas expired during the COVID-19 pandemic. Repeat visitors and visa extensions are not included.