This update features the September 2023 data release for the Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates – Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre.

More information regarding these data releases can be found here: Tourism data releases

Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates (MRTEs) refresh

The MRTEs provide an estimate of monthly expenditure on tourism from both international and domestic consumers by region and regional tourism organisation (RTO). This is the first time that we have released MRTE data since October 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the MRTEs were discontinued and were replaced by an interim measure, the Tourism Electronic Card Transactions (TECT).

We have also published two brand new webpages about MRTEs on the MBIE and Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre (TEIC) websites.:

• On the MRTEs webpage on MBIE, you can find more information about MRTEs, including history, inputs and outputs, methodology, quality assurance, limitations, and user guidelines, and links to other resources.
• On the MRTEs webpage on TEIC, you can find interactive visualisations, insight reports, data spreadsheets to download, and links to other resources.

Both webpages also contain a detailed methodology and a Q&A document.

Key points for September 2023

Overall tourism spend reported a 3% decrease in September 2023 ($2,201M) compared to the same month last year ($2,260M). The reduction in spend is mostly driven by the decline in the domestic spend segment (down 9%, from $1,670 to $1,516) but moderated by increases in international visitors and spend. South Island RTOs such as Destination Queenstown and Lake Wanaka have been effected by decreases in domestic and international tourism spend.

With overseas visitor arrivals trending up, international tourism spend’s share of the total is also increasing. The proportion of the market attributed to international visitors is up from 26% last year to 31% in September 2023.

Australia remains the largest tourism spend market, however Australian spend for September 2023 decreased following last year’s pent-up demand for winter sports after two years of border closures. In contrast, other market segments smaller in volume are noticeably growing from their previous year’s level, such as South Korea and China.

Monthly Regional Tourism Estimates (MRTE)

The below compares September 2023 results with September 2022.

• International spend maintains a steady growth compared with September 2022 – This month, the annual growth is 16% ($590M to $685M), driven by an increasing flow of international arrivals. This growth bumps up the international share of the total tourism revenue to 31%, an increase of 5% from September 2022.
• Domestic spend decreases compared to same month last year – Domestic spend ($1,516M) decreased by 9%. Domestic spend remains the largest source of tourism revenue at a national level. However, decreases in domestic spend is influencing overall spend in the regions. For example, Bay of Plenty experienced an overall decrease in domestic spend of 1.45% from last year, despite a 50% increase in international spend in this region.
• Australian spend is halved as other international sources surge – While Australia remains the most important international source of tourism spend ($218M), it has been almost halved (down 47%) compared to last year’s outlier winter (which reported over $400M spend in September 2022).
• Other international markets are recovering - South Korea and China increased their tourism spend five times in September 2023 compared to September 2022 figures. However, their share of the market is still modest, at 4% combined.
• Queenstown and Wanaka RTOs report the strongest declines in overall spend (down 27% and 21% respectively) – This contraction is driven by decreases both in domestic and international spend and may have been accentuated by the cryptosporidium outbreak in mid-September.
• Retail and gastronomy remain the most important product categories – The highest international spend by category goes to food and beverage services, at almost $200M. This is consistent with last year and pre-Covid trends.
  
  

Publishing Monthly Tourism Monitor

Next month we will release a brand-new product, the Monthly Tourism Monitor. The Monitor provides a holistic view of the tourism industry and presents the latest statistics.

The Tourism Monitor will be updated every month and released alongside our regular data release.

Tourism Insights update to be published on quarterly basis

We will continue to publish tourism datasets and to update the Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre dashboards every month. However, the insights newsletter (such as this one) will be moving from a monthly to a quarterly reporting. We intend to provide in-depth analysis and findings across the different products we work with.

Short insights available at the Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre

We are rolling out a new feature on the TEIC website. In the Data Releases sections, we are adding interactive panels. The feature enables users to explore our charts by hovering the mouse over any data point to see a text description of the figure. The panel can also be toggled to show further details of the area.

Brief insights are now available for the new MRTE series. In the coming months, we will implement this feature to other data releases in the TEIC.

Receive dynamic insight updates like this on your LinkedIn

The Tourism Evidence and Insights team at MBIE has a LinkedIn social media channel for the Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre (TEIC). This page brings dynamic and concise updates like this from the TEIC straight to your LinkedIn feed.

Tourism Evidence and Insights Centre

Accommodation Data Programme October 2023 data will be released on 7 December 2023.

See our tourism data release calendar with release dates to December 2023.

Data release calendar