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The Accommodation Data Programme (ADP) measures the activity of core tourism accommodation providers, excluding managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities and emergency housing. This article focuses on two metrics from the ADP:
All regions were in the Red setting of the COVID-19 Protection Framework (CPF, or the “traffic light system”) throughout February 2022 in response to widespread community transmission of the Omicron COVID-19 variant.
In comparison, for most of February 2021 all regions expect for Auckland were at Alert Level 1, meaning fewer restrictions were in place. Auckland moved to higher levels halfway through the month.
Aotearoa New Zealand experienced a 22% fall in total guest nights in February 2022 compared with February 2021. A fall in guest nights was also seen in every RTO in the country.
The Whanganui RTO experienced the largest decrease in guest nights, down 38% to 12k, due to a fall in occupancy rates of 14 percentage points.
Rotorua and Tairāwhiti closely followed the fall in guest nights in February 2022, both down 37% to 47k and 37k respectively.
Waitaki had the smallest fall in guest nights in February 2022, down 5% to 29k. Wellington RTO had the next lowest fall, down 11% to 135k.
Figure 1: Percentage change in total guest nights for select regional tourism organisations from February 2021 to February 2022.
Holiday park and campgrounds are very seasonal in terms of guest nights and see their largest numbers in January, traditionally the peak domestic holiday period for New Zealanders. This year was no different with 1.7 million guest nights registered in January 2022. The last couple of years have seen a large drop in February figures, as New Zealanders returned to work and the border remained closed to international visitors. The fall this year was larger than the previous year, down almost two thirds (63%) from January to February 2022 (628k), compared with a 54% fall between January and February 2021. This large fall is likely due to the red traffic light setting being in place. This is also shown in total guest nights for February 2022 falling 24% on February 2021.
Backpacker accommodation continued the downward trend in guest nights that has been observed over the last year or so, down 40% in February 2022 when compared with February 2021.
Figure 2: Total guest nights for New Zealand per accommodation property type between July 2020 and February 2022.
The national occupancy rate for February fell from 42.5% in 2021 to 34.9% in 2022. The latest occupancy rate for February 2022 was also way down on the occupancy rate for January 2022 (48.8%), due to the seasonality of the domestic market.
While Central Otago was the only RTO to see a rise in occupancy rates (up 0.9 percent points), it was due to a loss of available capacity rather than an increase in occupied capacity.
Tairāwhiti had the largest fall in percentage points, down 14.9 in February 2022 compared with 2021. The RTO was closely followed by Whanganui (down 14 percentage points) and the Nelson Tasman RTO (down 13.4 percentage points).
Figure 3: Percentage change in occupancy rate for select regional tourism organisations from February 2021 to February 2022.
ADP data are now available in the STE in the form of interactive graphs. As well as visualising the data, you can customise the graphs and can download them and the related data.
The latest ADP data can be found in the Sustainable Tourism Explorer in the economic resilience section of the economy area. Breakdowns include:
Alternatively, the data can be found on the Accommodation Data Programme dashboard published by Fresh Information.