It’s Tuesday, and the election campaign has found the visitor economy from an unexpected direction. Here’s what’s moving.
The election’s first tourism policy is about deer
Two coalition partners spent the weekend making competing offers to the same group of voters, and both of them land on conservation land. National released a hunting and fishing plan on Saturday, announced by James Meager, promising to recognise valued introduced species in law, strengthen the Game Animal Council, modernise Fish & Game, seek proposals for more Herds of Special Interest, replace the Tahr Control Plan and open suitable LINZ-managed Crown land to recreational hunting. The tourism content is explicit: work with the sector to grow hunting-related jobs and exports, and promote New Zealand’s hunting offer overseas.
ACT went further at the Hunting & Wildlife Expo the same weekend. Deputy leader Nicole McKee’s policy would move responsibility for game animals on conservation land away from the Department of Conservation to the Game Animal Council, and shift the DOC funding that goes with it. Conservation spokesperson Cameron Luxton said it is time the government “started trusting them with the responsibility they’ve earned”, and the package includes infringement offences for interfering with a hunt, drones and helicopters included.
For operators this is not a side issue. Guided hunting is a small, high-yield inbound segment that sells multi-day trips into exactly the shoulder months everyone else struggles to fill, and it depends entirely on access to public conservation land and on herd quality being managed rather than eradicated. Whichever version survives coalition negotiation will set the operating rules for that segment for the next three years. Worth noting what neither party has published: any assessment of what higher deer and tahr numbers cost the conservation estate that the rest of the visitor economy sells.
Source: National Party · RNZ · Scoop · Game Animal Council
Stat of the day
$100m
Annual foreign sales generated by New Zealand's guided hunting sector, which directly employs more than 530 people and handles around 6,000 trophy exports a year. Recreational hunters spend about $300 million a year all up. (NZ Game Animal Council submission, citing NZPHGA et al. 2020 and Kerr & Abell 2014)
Petrol is back at $3 a litre, and the drive economy pays first
Gaspy had the national average for 91 at exactly $3.00 a litre on Monday morning, up about 9 cents over 28 days. Brent crude was trading just above US$96 a barrel, having topped US$100 last week, as Iran and the United States traded fire over the Strait of Hormuz. In June, after the ceasefire, oil was around US$72.
New Zealand sells a self-drive product more than most countries admit. The vehicle rental industry turned over an estimated NZ$2.3 billion in 2025 on IBISWorld’s numbers, growing at 7.6% a year, and that sits on top of every coach charter, hotel transfer, campervan itinerary and guided day tour in the country. Fuel is the one input none of those operators can substitute or defer, and most of them are already contracted to trade partners at rates set months ago, so this lands on margin rather than on price. The timing is at least survivable: it arrives in the winter trough rather than in November, which gives the sector a quarter to see whether Hormuz settles before the summer rate sheets are locked.
Source: RNZ · Inside Tourism · MBIE weekly fuel price monitoring
The Hooker Valley reopens properly at 3pm today
After a private event and a blessing from mana whenua, the new 189-metre suspension bridge across the Hooker River opens to the public this afternoon. It is the longest suspension bridge and longest single-span footbridge in the country, it cost $4.85 million, and it ends fifteen months in which the Mackenzie’s single most-walked attraction ran short of its own destination. DOC puts the value to the district at around $167 million over ten years.
Anyone sending guests up there this week should send them properly dressed. MetService recorded the country’s low at Aoraki Mount Cook on Sunday morning at minus 6.3°C, with the village facing daytime highs near 3°C and overnight lows approaching minus 11°C, and snow fell to around 200 metres in the far south. DOC’s Sally Jones has been blunt that the track can be very icy and that people need boots, warm layers, hats and gloves for sub-alpine conditions. It is a flat, well-formed walk in January. It is not one in late July.
Source: Department of Conservation · 1News · Newswire
Savour Northland is cancelled for 2026 over a funding shortfall
Northland’s month-long food and beverage festival will not run this year. Northland NZ says it is on hiatus for 2026, with the Northern Advocate reporting a lack of government funding behind the decision. The festival debuted in 2024 with 126 events and 49 entries into the Savour Northland Challenge, and returned last October across more than 25 venues from Mangawhai to Awanui, backed by Northland Inc and Northland Winegrowers.
Regional food festivals are the cheapest tool a northern region has for moving visitors into the off-peak, which is precisely why Wellington keeps writing cheques for Visa Wellington On a Plate. Northland’s problem is that its shoulder-season demand is thin enough that the events built to fix it cannot fund themselves from ticket sales, so they live or die on contestable grants. The Northern Advocate reported earlier this year that Far North community boards had put money behind the 2026 event, which was evidently not enough to close the gap. Worth watching as other regions set their own event budgets over the next few months.
Source: NZ Herald / Northern Advocate · Savour Northland · Scoop, 2025 launch · Northern Advocate, community board backing
Buller is giving away flights to keep its air link alive
Development West Coast and volunteer group Promoting Buller are handing out a pair of return Wellington to Westport flights for each of four weekends from 31 July, going to the first person to confirm a rental booking with Buller Car Rentals. Originair runs the route twice weekly, Mondays and Fridays, and DWC is separately underwriting the service through August while longer-term government support is worked out.
Strip away the giveaway mechanics and this is a district paying to keep spare seats from flying empty, because an underused route is a route that gets cut. Westport has already lost this connection once, when Sounds Air withdrew in December 2024. DWC chief executive Heath Milne framed it as getting as much economic value as possible from the flights while showcasing Buller, and Promoting Buller chair Jessie Creedmore called the route a critical airlink for the community. Tying the prize to a car hire is the smart part: a flown seat is worth little to Buller, a flown seat with a vehicle under it reaches Punakaiki and the Denniston plateau.
Source: Development West Coast · RNZ, route background
Coming up
- 28 July – New Hooker Valley suspension bridge opens to the public at Aoraki, 3pm
- 30 July – Early-bird registration closes for Tourism Summit Aotearoa
- 31 July – First of four free Wellington–Westport flight weekends
- 1 August – Visa Wellington On a Plate opens, running across the month
- 5-6 August – TECNZ conference, Te Pae Christchurch
- 7 August – Submissions close on the RCT Group zipline concession application
- 8 August – Chelsea FC Women v an Auckland FC Women’s Invitational XI, Eden Park
- 10 August – Ridgeburn’s deadline to supply further information to the fast-track panel
- 11-12 August – AHICE Aotearoa, Te Pae Christchurch
- 24 August – Group, tour escort and ADS FIT visa applications move to enhanced Immigration Online
- 25 August – Tourism Holdings audited FY26 results
- 26 October – Air New Zealand becomes the first international airline into Western Sydney Airport, three return services a week from Auckland
- 28 October – Air New Zealand’s first direct Christchurch–Singapore service departs
- 4 November – Tourism Summit Aotearoa and NZ Tourism Awards, Te Pae Christchurch
- 19 November – Air Niugini’s earliest planned resumption of Port Moresby–Auckland, after two deferrals
- 22 July 2028 – Total solar eclipse across the lower South Island, Milford to Dunedin
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.